Design Principles for Affective Online Learning

The significance of students’ affective states in educational settings is widely acknowledged. While face-to-face learning allows teachers to discern these states through non-verbal cues, online learning presents challenges due to the absence of such cues. This calls for research exploring methods to study students’ learning-centered affective states (LCASs) in online learning with the use of technology. The common limitation of relevant research is that it is limited to basic emotions and is not conducted in a controlled setting with standardized stimuli. In this paper, we present a set of design principles for educational content aiming at eliciting relevant LCASs: boredom, confusion, frustration, curiosity, and engagement, drawing insights from both literature and experts. Moreover, we provide a proof of concept through the exemplification of these principles: a set of educational videos evaluated by participants (N = 63) in an iterative study setup, serving as standardized stimuli.