Affective Learning Analytics

Emotions

D’Mello and Jensen discuss the role that emotions play in the affectiveness of instruction (D’Mello & Jensen, 2022). Yes, you read that right, that is not a misprint – a-ffectiveness, not e-ffectiveness. Affectiveness is an action (in this case learning) caused, or influenced, by emotions (Ticak, 2022). Most of the time when discussing learning, it is a very matter-of-fact, straightforward discussion. Content is prepared. Content is delivered. Content is received. Evaluation occurs and content is either retained/recalled, or not. A grade is recorded. Rinse. Repeat.

Doesn’t sound like much fun, does it?

Ah… fun… that would be an emotion. And to “have fun” one would have to be in the right state of mind. As it turns out, for learning to occur, one would have to be in the right state of mind as well. Shocker, right?

Research suggests strongly that situational awareness of the emotional state of the student has a huge effect on the success of the knowledge transfer that takes place during an instructional session. If the student is bored, tired, anxious, or experiencing a host of other affective conditions, then the ability to learn is not so effective.

Measuring Emotions

Body language (position, movement, posture, etc.) coupled with facial expressions can be monitored to give a repeatable and accurate tracking of the emotive state of a learner during instruction. In the case of the research by D’Mello and Jensen (D’Mello & Jensen, 2022), this instructional period was during educational gameplay. However, research suggested that student emotions and their emotional state could be successful predictors of student success in general. Although they suggested that more research be done to fully extrapolate this hypothesis, the preliminary data is strong.

Predictions

So, what does affective learning analytics (ALA) tell us? More than just the aptitude of the instructional content or teacher, the mental and emotional well-being of the student is important. Students with high levels of anxiety, confusion, and frustration were reliably predicted to have high dropout rates and negative feedback on the experience as a whole (D’Mello & Jensen, 2022). The full cause of why these emotions were present (complications with the technology, social or family issues, etc.) was outside the scope of the research, but for those students who were bored, or had social guilt over their performance feeding into anxiety, the outcomes suffered.

Surprise!

I typically relate Human-Computer Interaction or Human-Computer Interfaces (HCI) most often to situations where the human is trying to get the computer to do something (e.g., eye movement tracking to move a mouse onscreen for assistive technology (Eyegaze, n.d.), or motion-capture (Mocap) (DeGuzman, 2021) for animation of computer-generated imagery (CGI), etc.), but this research shows that same sort of HCI used for a completely different “Mocap” to generate analytical data that is overlaid with instructional delivery outcomes to see where there are corresponding highs and lows. Fantastic!

That’s new

Most of the time, we hear these terms and think nothing about it since they sound the same, but when we see these terms, we typically default to “Don’t you mean ‘effective’?” That was certainly the case with the AI grammar/spell checker running as I wrote these thoughts. It was not until the post was almost finished and I had repeatedly told the AI that I did not want to change words that it eventually gave up. I wonder, did the AI finally “understand” what I was saying, or did it really just give up? Maybe I taught it something, or is that just my positive outlook affecting my point of view?

References

D’Mello, S. K., & Jensen, E. (2022). Emotional Learning Analytics. In C. Lang, G. Siemens, A. F. Wise, D. Gašević, & A. Merceron (Eds.), Handbook of Learning Analytics (Second ed., pp. 120-129). Society for Learning Analytics Research (SoLAR). https://doi.org/10.18608/hla22

DeGuzman, K. (2021, November 7). What is Mocap — The Science and Art Behind Motion Capture. studiobinder: https://www.studiobinder.com/blog/what-is-mocap-definition/

Eyegaze. (n.d.). Eyegaze Home. Eyegaze: https://eyegaze.com/

Ticak, M. (2022, October 20). Affective vs. Effective: What’s the Difference? Grammarly: https://www.grammarly.com/blog/affective-vs-effective/