All roads lead to Rome

Tracking students' affect as they overcome misconceptions

Abstract

Helping students to overcome misconceptions is a complex problem in digital learning environments in which students need to monitor their own progress and self-regulate their own learning. This is particularly so in flexible, discovery-based environments that have been criticised for the lack of support and structure provided to students. Emerging evidence suggests that discovery-based environments might be ineffective due to students becoming confused, frustrated or bored. In the study reported here, we examined the affective experience of students as they worked to overcome a common misconception in a discovery-based environment. While the results suggest that students experience a range of emotions, they all successfully overcame their initial misconception. Implications for the investigation of student affect in discovery-based environments and the design of these environments are also discussed.