The role of negative emotions and emotion regulation on self-regulated learning with MetaTutor

Abstract

Self-regulated learning (SRL) and emotion regulation have been studied as separate constructs which impact students’ learning with intelligent tutoring systems (ITSs). There is a general assumption that students who are proficient in enacting cognitive and metacognitive SRL processes during learning with ITSs are also proficient emotion regulators. In this paper, we investigated the relationship between metacognitive and cognitive SRL processes and emotion regulation by examining students’ self-perceived emotion regulation strategies and comparing the differences between their (1) mean self-reported negative emotions, (2) proportional learning gains (PLGs), and the frequency of (3) metacognitive and (4) cognitive strategy use as they interacted with MetaTutor, an ITS designed to teach students about the circulatory system. Students were classified into groups based on self-perceived emotion regulation strategies and results showed students who perceived themselves as using adaptive emotion regulation strategies reported less negative emotions. Although no significant differences were found between the groups’ learning outcomes, there were significant differences between the groups’ frequency use of cognitive and metacognitive processes throughout the task. Our results emphasize the need to better understand how real-time emotion regulation strategies relate to SRL processes during learning with ITSs and can be used to enhance learning outcomes by encouraging adaptive emotion regulation strategies as well as increased frequencies of metacognitive and cognitive SRL processes.