When the Going Gets Tough: Students’ Perceptions on Affect-Aware Support in an Exploratory Learning Environment for Fractions

It is well understood that affect interacts with and influences the learning process [2, 7, 9]. The impact of affect on learning is not straightforward. For example, D’Mello et al. explore how confusion, which superficially might be considered a negative affective state, is likely to promote learning under appropriate conditions [3]. In addition, the way the students perceive the tasks and the support they receive can impact their experience, agency and self-efficacy which in turn has been shown to relate to persistence and long-term outcomes [1]. It is important therefore, to deepen our understanding of the role of affect in learning in general and in particular students’ perceptions of their own learning with digital environments that provide feedback.

In previous work [4] we described the development of affect-aware support and the effect of such support in relation to learning during a whole classroom intervention with a sequence of fraction learning tasks within the iTalk2Learn platform. In contrast, in this paper, we report on a study that asked students to self-report their affective states while undertaking fractions tasks.