The impact of an adaptive learning environment on students’ classroom related and learning related emotions

Abstract

One-to-one tuition has often been cited as a more beneficial approach to learning in large classroom environments. However, this is rarely practical in traditional classrooms such as those observed in most universities. The standard approach of one-lecturer-to-many-students can result in bottlenecks where multiple students require support simultaneously, a common occurrence in subjects of a technical nature such as those found in STEM subjects. Students encounter many emotions in the classroom as a result of how and when they receive support. Lecturer bottlenecks and delayed support can result in students having negative emotions. For example, weaker students may feel frustrated or even hopelessness when they fail to make progress on their own or in the case of stronger students, they may feel boredom when they are not sufficiently challenged. This research explores the impact that an adaptive learning environment (ALE), with adaptive content and worksheets, has on academic emotional engagement. It follows a design science approach which consists of three key phases: (1) Problem identification and needs analysis, (2) Design development and implementation and (3) Evaluation. This evaluation phase can further be described as an explanatory sequential mixed methods design. Using the ALE as opposed to traditional approaches, findings showed an overall significant increase in three aspects, namely, in overall academic emotional engagement, classroom academic emotional engagement and learning academic emotional engagement. When viewed from the perspective of separating positive and negative emotions, negative emotions were greater impacted, showing a significant decline in negative academic emotions with a large effect size for those students who used the ALE. This was further explained and supported by the qualitative findings. Finally, the findings help suggest how an ALE can be used in classroom environments. It also includes a discussion on possible limitations and highlighted areas for future research. These are discussed in the conclusion chapter of the thesis