a fitting end to the year: emotions in teaching and learning

Terry Anderson in Virtual Canuck draws our attention to a report from the Learning Analytics Community Exchange which focuses on emotions.

Terry Anderson is someone whose work I admire – he’s the one who talks about teaching, cognitive and social presence in a Community of Inquiry model in education and more specifically in distance education.

The new report introduces emotional presence to the mix:

“Social participation ” say the authors “in online contexts presents several unique emotional challenges to earners and teachers” (Daniel & Stupnisky, 2012). Insecurity about losing voice and identity create fear on an online environment they say. “Emotional presence might (therefore) be an important element that the learning analytics community need to take into account” (p.5).

“…emotions” they say, “can vary significantly from learner to learner” (p.6).

The report proceeds to describe methods for collecting new data and proposes content analysis, natural language processing, and behavioural indicators to gather data from students.

Rientes & Alden Rivers

While I have merely skimmed this report so far, I am keen to read more deeply. It is a valuable addition to learning analytics and to the development of a model which I find useful and sensible in regard to teaching practice.

And on that note: Christmas and Merry don’t match for me so – have an enjoyable and relaxing break.

Alden Rivers, B. & Rientes, B. (2014). Measuring and understanding learner emotions: Evidence and prospects. [Report]. Learning Analytics Exchange. Retrieved from http://laceproject.eu/publications/learning-analytics-and-emotions.pdf