Elizabeth Webster & Allyson Hadwin University of Victoria Presented at the 2013 conference for the Canadian Society for the Study of Education (CSSE)

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Regulating Emotions During Computer-Supported
Collaborative Problem Solving
Elizabeth Webster & Allyson Hadwin
University of Victoria
Collaborative Micro Script: Emotion Regulation & Awareness Tool (Beginning)
Participants
Introduction
Collaboration has been identified as an essential 21st century learning outcome. With a
growing emphasis on virtual teamwork, the ability to collaborate in online environments is
an important skill for university students to attain. An underemphasized aspect is the
regulation of emotions. Theory and research indicate emotions are connected to social-
behavioral engagement (Linnenbrink-Garcia et al., 2011), conflict management (Jehn,
1997), and trust and cohesion (Jones & George, 1998; Kreijns et al. 2003). Although
research is emerging, few studies have investigated students’ emotional experiences and
the regulation of their emotions during computer supported collaborative learning (CSCL).
Purpose & Research Questions
The purpose of this exploratory study was to examine university students’ emotions as
well as their goals and strategies for regulating their emotions during two CSCL problem-
solving tasks.
1. What emotions do students experience immediately before, during, and after a time-
limited CSCL problem-solving task?
2. What are students’ goals and strategies for regulating their emotions?
3. How do goals and strategies change in a second CSCL problem-solving task?
References
Boekaerts, M., & Niemivirta, M. (2000). Self-regulated learning: Finding a balance between learning goals and ego-protective goals.
In M. Boekaerts, P. R. Pintrich, & M. Zeidner (Eds.), Handbook of self-regulation (pp. 417–450). San Diego: Academic Press.
Gross, J. J. (1999). Emotion Regulation: Past, Present, Future. Cognition & Emotion, 13(5), 551–573. doi:10.1080/026999399379186
Hadwin, A. F., Järvelä, S. & Miller, M. (2011). Self-regulated, co-regulated, and socially shared regulation of learning. In B.
Zimmerman & D. Schunk (Eds.). Handbook of Self-Regulation of Learning and Performance (pp. 65-84). New York: Routledge.
Järvenoja, H., & Järvelä, S. (2005). How students describe the sources of their emotional and motivational experiences during the
learning process: A qualitative approach. Learning and Instruction, 15(5), 465–480. doi:10.1016/j.learninstruc.2005.07.012
Järvenoja, H., & Järvelä, S. (2009). Emotion control in collaborative learning situations: Do students regulate emotions evoked by
social challenges? The British Journal of Educational Psychology, 79, 463–481. doi:10.1348/000709909X402811
Jehn, K. A. (1997). A qualitative analysis of conflict types and dimensions in organizational groups. Administrative Science Quarterly,
42(3), 530–557.
Jones, G. R., & George, J. M. (1998). The experience and evolution of trust: Implications for cooperation and teamwork. Academy of
Management Review, 23(3), 531–546.
Kreijns, K., Kirschner, P., & Jochems, W. (2003). Identifying the pitfalls for social interaction in computer-supported collaborative
learning environments: A review of the research. Computers in Human Behavior, 19, 335-353.
Linnenbrink-Garcia, L., Rogat, T. K., & Koskey, K. L. K. (2011). Affect and engagement during small group instruction. Contemporary
Educational Psychology, 36(1), 13–24. doi:10.1016/j.cedpsych.2010.09.001
Williams, M. (2007). Building genuine trust through interpersonal emotion management: A threat regulation model of trust and
collaboration across boundaries. Academy of Management Review, 32(2), 595–621. doi:10.5465/AMR.2007.24351867
Winne, P. H., & Hadwin, A. F. (1998). Studying as self-regulated learning. In D. J. Hacker, J. Dunlosky, & A. Graesser (Eds.),
Metacognition in educational theory and practice (pp. 277–304). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. 371.
Winne, P. H., & Hadwin, A. F. (2008). The weave of motivation and self-regulated learning. In D. H. Schunk & B. J. Zimmerman
(Eds.), Motivation and self-regulated learning: Theory, research, and applications (pp. 297–314). New York, NY: Lawrence
Erlbaum Associates.
Wosnitza, M., & Volet, S. (2005). Origin, direction and impact of emotions in social online learning. Learning and Instruction, 15(5),
449–464. doi:10.1016/j.learninstruc.2005.07.009
Findings
• 175 students in a first-year undergraduate course designed to help students develop
SRL knowledge and skills (ED-D 101: Learning Strategies for University Success)
• Assigned to groups of 3-5 to complete two CSCL problem-solving tasks
Research funded by a SSHRC Standard Research Grant 435-2012-0529 (A. Hadwin)
and SSHRC Doctoral Fellowship (E. Webster)
Theoretical Framework
• Successful collaboration involves self-regulation (SRL), co-regulation (coRL), and
socially shared regulation of learning (SSRL; Hadwin et al., 2011).
• Winne and Hadwin’s (1998, 2008) model of SRL describes regulation as a four-
phased recursive process.
• Emotions occur as conditions and products within each phase.
• Emotions can also be a target of these regulatory processes.
Monitoring
&
Evaluating
Task
Perceptions
Goals &
Plans
Task
Enactment
Large
Scale
Adaptation
EMOTIONS
SRL
CoRL SSRL
Winne & Hadwin (1998, 2008)
n M (SD)
ED-D 101 grade (9-point scale) 170 5.7 (2.4)
Age in years 166 18.6 (2.6)
0
25
50
75
100
125
150
175
Gender Faculty Year
Frequency
Female
Male
Social Science / HSD
/ Education
Science / Engineering
Humanities / Fine Arts
Business
First
Second
Third +
Collaborative Macro Script
Group
Coordinated
Individual
Expertise
Solo
Planning
Group
Planning
Joint
Challenge
Solo
Reflection
Group
Coordinated
Individual
Expertise
Solo
Planning
Group
Planning
Joint
Challenge
Solo
Reflection
CSCL Assignment 2
CSCL Assignment 1
Figure 1. Frequencies of positive and negative emotions during
CSCL Session 1.
0
25
50
75
100
125
150
175
Beginning Middle End
Frequency
Time
Negative
Positive
Students generally felt positive about
the collaborative experience
Type of Emotion
excited
optimistic
confident
happy
focused
calm
anxious
worried
stressed
doubtful
frustrated/angry
disappointed
other
Intensity of
Emotion
very strong
strong
moderate
weak
very weak
Evaluation
of Emotion
good
bad
Emotion
Regulation Goal
increase
decrease
switch
maintain
do nothing about
Emotion Regulation Strategy
focusing on the task
creating a good plan
changing the plan or approach
changing thoughts or beliefs
thinking positively
talking to others in the group
taking deep breaths and/or relaxing
accepting it and carrying on
doing nothing
other
Type of
Emotion
Regulation
Source of
Emotion
0
50
100
150
200
250
Positive Negative
Frequency
Type of Emotion
Do Nothing
Switch
Decrease
Increase
Maintain
Students intended to
regulate both positive and
negative emotions
Figure 2. Students’ goals for regulating positive and negative
emotions in CSCL Session 1.
0
20
40
60
80
100
120
140
Maintain Increase Decrease
Frequency
Regulation Goal
Change thoughts
Other
Do nothing
Accept it
Change plan
Breathe/relax
Talk to group
Create plan
Think positively
Focus
Figure 3. Students’ strategies for achieving regulation goals (top) and
over time (bottom) in CSCL Session 1.
Evidence of strategically
selecting strategies
ERAT
Beginning
ERAT
Middle
ERAT
End
0
20
40
60
80
100
120
140
160
180
200
Beginning Middle
Frequency
Time
Change thoughts
Other
Do nothing
Accept it
Change plan
Breathe/relax
Talk to group
Create plan
Think positively
Focus
Changes from CSCL Session 1 to CSCL Session 2
• Overall, similar patterns from Session 1 to Session 2.
• Emotions: Students reported more positive emotions at the
beginning and middle of Session 2 than in Session 1.
• Strategies: Students selected focusing on the task more
frequently and thinking positively less frequently in Session 2
than in Session 1.
• Regulation: Students indicated thinking positively should be
enacted by the whole group more frequently in Session 2 than
in Session 1.
0
20
40
60
80
100
Frequency
Strategy
CoRL
SRL
SSRL
Students view emotion
regulation as something to
do together
Figure 4. Students’ intentions for self-, co-, and shared regulation of
emotions in CSCL Session 1.
Discussion
Positive emotions dominated students’ reports:
• This findings highlights the need to consider not just negative emotions that
may interfere with progress, but also positive emotions that may facilitate
progress. Understanding positive experiences could help to develop instruction
and strategies for students who feel negatively about the process.
• We could speculate that one reason for students’ positive experience was the
macro and micro scripting provided to guide students through the collaborative
process. However, a control group is necessary to substantiate this claim.
• From the first CSCL session to the second, the proportion of positive emotions
at the beginning and middle grew. This shift could be due to (a) students’
positive experience in the first session, (b) students having a better idea of
what to expect in the second session, and/or (c) students regulating their
emotions better the second time around. All of these reasons would be
indicative of engaging in fourth phase adaptation (Winne & Hadwin, 1998).
Students planned to regulate their emotions:
• Regardless of the emotion, the vast majority of students selected a goal for
regulating their emotion. Their goals mainly focused on increasing or
maintaining positive emotions and decreasing negative emotions. However,
although students’ goals made sense in light of their emotions, this does not
necessarily mean their goals were appropriate in terms of effective
collaboration or task engagement.
• Students appeared to be strategically selecting strategies on the basis of at
least two factors: (a) their goals for regulation (e.g., the proportions of
strategies shifted depending on the goal) and (b) the context (e.g., some
strategies were chosen more at the beginning or middle of the session).
Students perceived emotion regulation as a shared process:
• Students mainly indicated their whole group should enact the strategies. There
were fewer instances of self-regulation and even fewer instances of co-
regulation. These findings support research by Järvenoja and Järvelä (2009).
• This finding is important considering emotion regulation is often regarded as
an individual process or an other-regulated process (Boekaerts & Niemivirta,
2000; Gross, 1999; Williams, 2007). Future research should continue to
examine emotion regulation as a shared process in collaborative contexts to
(a) corroborate findings about students’ perceptions and (b) generate evidence
of shared regulatory processes actually occurring during collaboration.
Considerations & Future Research
No control group:
• It is difficult to say (a) how representative our findings are or (b) whether there
was something about this particular group of students or the collaborative
design that led to these findings. Future research should include a control
group of students who have not taken ED-D 101 and/or who are not provided
the same structure for completing the collaborative task.
All data were self-report and focused on intentions for regulating emotions:
• Due to the nature of these data, we do not know if students followed through
with their plans for regulating. However, helping students to become aware of
their own feelings and to think about how they can strategically engage in and
adapt to challenging situations is a crucial part of developing better regulatory
skills. Ideally, these self-report data will be triangulated with other evidence of
emotion regulation (e.g., chat log data).
Development of ERAT:
• Students tended to choose a limited number of responses most often. Some
response choices could be revised or dropped altogether. For example, the
strategy of focusing on the task was selected most often. This is a relatively
broad strategy that could be implemented in different ways. Although students
intended to use the strategy, they may not have had a good idea of how to
enact it. One option might be to make focusing on the task a general category,
with more specific strategies within that category.
Future analyses:
• Examine patterns over time within individual students, rather than at the whole-
class level.
• Consider self-, co-, and shared regulation of emotions at the collaborative
group level via case studies of high- and low-performing groups.
ERAT
Middle
ERAT
End
ERAT
Beginning
Time 1
Confident
Optimistic
Focused
Excited
Calm
Happy
Time 2
Confident
Optimistic
Happy
Focused
Excited
Calm
Time 3
Happy
Confident
Optimistic
Excited
Calm
Focused
Time 1
Anxious
Worried
Stressed
Time 2
Stressed
Anxious
Worried
Frustrated
Doubtful
Time 3
Anxious
Stressed
Worried
Disappointed
Frustrated
Doubtful