Amber Chauncey Strain

Inducing and tracking confusion with contradictions during critical thinking and scientific reasoning

Cognitive disequilibrium and its affiliated affective state of confusion have been found to be beneficial to learning due to the effortful cognitive activities that accompany their experience. Although confusion naturally occurs during learning, it can be induced and scaffolded to increase learning opportunities. We addressed the possibility of induction in a study where learners engaged in trialogues on critical thinking and scientific reasoning topics with animated tutor and student agents. Confusion was induced by staging disagreements and contradictions between the animated agents, and the (human) learners were invited to provide their opinions. Self-reports of confusion and learner responses to embedded forced-choice questions indicated that the contradictions were successful at inducing confusion in the minds of the learners. The contradictions also resulted in enhanced learning gains under certain conditions.

Integrating Cognitive, Metacognitive, and Affective Regulatory Processes with MetaTutor

Research on scaffolding students’ self-regulation and metacognition during learning with advanced learning technologies has led to numerous models and theories from various fields. The role of students’ emotional and motivational processes, on the other hand, has recently become a central focus of research. In this chapter, we describe recent findings regarding emotions during learning, in classroom-based and laboratory-based research domains. Next, we discuss how these findings influenced the development of MetaTutor, a research tool and learning environment, designed to track students’ emotions during learning. We present results from a preliminary investigation into MetaTutor’s usefulness for tracking students’ emotions during a 2-h learning session. We conclude by discussing implications for incorporating affect into models of self-regulated learning, and the development of computer-based learning environments that track, scaffold, and respond to students’ emotions during learning.

Emotion regulation during learning

Learning episodes are rife with emotional experiences, so it is critical that learners regulate negative affective states as they occur. In the present study, learners were instructed to use two forms of cognitive reappraisal to regulate negative emotions that arose during a one hour learning session. Our findings suggest that cognitive reappraisal is an effective strategy for regulating emotions during learning and can help learners achieve better comprehension scores than a do-nothing control.

Affect, Meta-affect, and Affect Regulation During Complex Learning

Complex learning of difficult subject matter with educational technologies involves a coordination of cognitive, metacognitive, and affective processes. While extensive theoretical and empirical research has examined learners’ cognitive and metacognitive processes, research on affective processes during learning has been slow to emerge. Because learners’ affective states can significantly impact their thoughts, feelings, behavior, and learning outcomes, inquiry into how these states emerge and influence engagement and learning is of vital importance. In this chapter, we describe several key theories of affect, meta-affect, and affect regulation during learning. We then describe our own empirical research that focuses on identifying the affective states that spontaneously emerge during learning with educational technologies, how affect relates to learning outcomes, and how affect can be regulated. The studies that we describe incorporate a variety of educational technologies, different learning contexts, a number of student populations, and diverse methodologies to track affect. We then describe and evaluate an affect-sensitive version of AutoTutor, a fully-automated intelligent tutoring system that detects and helps learners regulate their negative affective states (frustration, boredom, confusion) in order to increase engagement, task persistence, and learning gains. We conclude by discussing future directions of research on affect, meta-affect, and affect regulation during learning with educational technologies.

What Makes Learning Fun? Exploring the Influence of Choice and Difficulty on Mind Wandering and Engagement during Learning

Maintaining learner engagement is critical for all types of learning technologies. This study investigated how choice over a learning topic and the difficulty of the materials influenced mind wandering, engagement, and learning during a computerized learning task. 59 participants were randomly assigned to a text difficulty and choice condition (i.e., self-selected or experimenter-selected topic) and measures of mind wandering and engagement were collected during learning. Participants who studied the difficult version of the texts reported significantly higher rates of mind wandering (d = .41) and lower arousal both during (d = .52) and after the learning session (d = .48). Mind wandering and arousal were not affected by choice. However, participants who were assigned to study the topic they selected reported significantly more positive valence during (d = .57) but not after learning. These participants also scored substantially higher on a subsequent knowledge test (d = 1.27). These results suggest that choice and text difficulty differentially impact mind wandering, engagement, and learning and provide important considerations for the design of ITSs and serious games with a reading component.

How do learners regulate their emotions

In an online survey, one hundred and thirteen college students were asked to describe the emotion regulation strategies they frequently use during learning. We found that learners tend to report using certain strategies more frequently than others, and that generally the strategies that are used most often are considered by leaners to be the most effective. We discuss the implications of these findings for the development of intelligent tutoring systems that train and scaffold effective strategies to help learners regulate their emotions.