Toward a Feature-Driven Understanding of Students' Emotions during Interactions with Agent-Based Learning Environments: A Selective Review

Introduction

The last few decades have witnessed an explosion in the study of the complex role of emotions in a multitude of learning contexts (Azevedo & Aleven, 2013; D’Mello, 2013; Calvo & D’Mello, 2010, 2011, 2012; Harley, in press; Pekrun & Linnenbrink-Garcia, 2014). Amidst the application of traditional and cutting-edge methods to computer-based learning environments (CBLEs), however, many fundamental questions remain unanswered: How do students feel about interacting with specific types of CBLEs? Does the incidence of discrete emotions vary between similar types of environments? What features support or hinder learners’ experience of adaptive emotions within these environments? This review is unique in attempting to answer these questions as they relate to a type of CBLE, namely agent-based learning environments (ABLEs; which feature pedagogical agents) and in so doing address these gaps in the research literature (Calvo & D’Mello, 2010; D’Mello, 2013). Understanding how and why learners’ feel they way they do toward ABLEs is important because of the relationship between learning and emotions in which emotions can both support (e.g., enjoyment, hope) and hinder learning (e.g., boredom, anxiety; Pekrun, 2011; Pekrun, Daniel, Perry, Goetz, Stupinsky, 2010; Pekrun, Goetz, Frenzel, Petra, & Perry, 2011).