Emotions in flipped and lecture-based math courses

Abstract

Background: Emotions play an important role in learning. Activating teaching methods, such as flipped learning, can provide positive learning experiences but also pose emotional challenges to students. Aims: This intensive longitudinal study investigated 1) how students’ emotional valence before a learning event, learning mode (individual, peer, teacher-led), teaching implementation (lecture-based vs. flipped), and physiological arousal (electrodermal activity, EDA) during the learning event related to emotional valence after a learning event, and 2) how EDA varies across within-event segments and teaching implementations during learning events. Sample: Participants were 69 students enrolled in an engineering mathematics course implemented either as lecture-based (n = 34) or flipped learning (n = 35). Methods: Students reported their emotional states via a smartphone application and wore smart rings to measure EDA. A series of multilevel binomial logistic regression and linear mixed-effects models were analyzed across 546 learning events, totaling 827 h of data. Results: Positive pre-event emotional valence predicted positive post-event emotional valence. Teacher-led events were associated with more positive post-event emotional valence than individual events, particularly in the lecture-based group. The main effect of the teaching implementation was not significant. EDA did not show robust associations with post-event emotional valence; however, lecture-based events showed a clearer decline in EDA across event segments than flipped learning events. Conclusions: The results highlight the importance of supporting social and individual learning processes and examining physiological arousal as a temporal learning-event process rather than a simple proxy for post-event emotional valence.