Exploring the Impact of a Learning Dashboard on Student Affect

Research highlights that many students experience negative emotions during learning activities, and these can have a detrimental impact on behaviors and outcomes. Here, we investigate the impact of a particular kind of affective intervention, namely a learning dashboard, on two deactivating emotions: boredom and lack of excitement. The data comes from a study we conducted with over 200 middle school students interacting with an intelligent tutor that provided varying levels of support to encourage dashboard use. We analyze the data using a range of techniques to show that the learning dashboard is associated with reduced deactivating emotions, but that its utility also depends on the way its use is promoted and on students’ gender.