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Educator's Voice

Volume 6, Issue 10
October 12, 2005

Emotions in the Cyber Classroom

Did you just say, "Not in my class!"? If you are like most educators—indeed, most people—emotions are dreaded, dreadful territory. Just the word "emotions" conjures up emotions in most people. How ironic! Yet you need to get a grip, grab your courage, and read on. In the end, there are key opportunities to improve your understanding of learning, teaching, and the play of emotions in your cyber classroom. It is time to let your students get emotional!

Emotions Mediate All Learning

Brain research has demonstrated that learning depends on emotions. The process of learning therefore cannot be separated physiologically from the processes of the brain and body that are responsible for emotions. We may like to think that emotions are superfluous, but that is not the way it works. To think otherwise not only deludes us, it keeps us from understanding how best to work with cyber learners.

Which of your memories are most profound and easily accessed? A quick inventory might include where you were when you heard of the loss of the Columbia Space Shuttle; your first kiss; or the day you got your driver's license. All of these were implanted deeply in your mind by their intrinsically emotional component. Brain studies over the last quarter century have confirmed that not just inherently emotional memories, but, in fact, all memories and all learning have this same characteristic. Learning involves not just the left-brain, the logical fact-oriented side, but indeed the whole brain, from the amygdala to the limbic system to the cortex. The impact of emotions cannot be separated, for better or worse, from even the most dry, rote learning.

As Eric Jensen points out, "Emotions drive the threesome of attention, meaning and memory." In essence, that just about sums up what we know about learning: attending to information, constructing meaning, and lodging it in our memory. Brain researchers have shown that emotions are critical to patterning, which is the way that information is organized in the brain, and how we are able to retrieve that information. Emotions assist in both evaluating and integrating information and experiences.

However, as we know, not all emotions facilitate learning. Stress, frustration, anger and fear can all overwhelm the brain with hormones and thought patterns that totally shut down one's ability to learn. When major emotional flooding occurs it is true that one literally cannot think straight. Therefore, the best cyber-learning environment is one that prevents highly charged or negative emotions from undermining learning.

Cyber Learners Have Emotions Too!

Now that we know that learning is dependent upon emotions, we should look at our classes through the learner's eyes for a moment. What aspects of online learning can generate feelings, either positive or negative? For the sake of discussion, we can look at the learner's emotions related to learning itself, to the content, to the technology, and to the interactions occurring in the cyber classroom. Let's look at each of these briefly.

Emotions About Learning

Past experiences related to learning, such as grades, successes, failures and personal expectations met or dashed, all have major impact on the student's current ability to learn. Emotions related to competence, self-assurance, fear, frustration and so forth will each play a role in how a student approaches learning and what, in fact, is learned. We should therefore recognize that learners come to our classrooms with emotions and a predisposition about being a student.

Interacting with the Content

Learners are similarly predisposed with emotions about the subject matter of a course. Learning the content of a course requires organizing and building on previous knowledge and skills, all of which have their emotional components. A math whiz approaches statistics with a different emotional frame of reference than a novice. No content is emotion-free because learners are not blank slates. Making content relevant and meaningful to a learner is a well-established means of enhancing learning. It is the role of the learner's emotions that make this a tried and true approach. Simply put, that which we value, attend to, and offer attention to makes learning easier.

Interacting with the Technology

Technology is another often unrecognized source of emotions that is disregarded when everything else is going well in the eClassroom. But when navigation is tangled or links are dead, let alone when the computer crashes or a draft assignment disappears down the "electronic drain," emotions can rise astronomically. Our goals to support learning then are to keep the mechanics transparent, the course accessible, and the overall interaction between learner and technology positive.

Personal Interactions

Personal interactions in typical courses come in two varieties: with the instructor and with other learners. These personal interactions, like all interpersonal relations, can be highly emotive. Positive interactions greatly enhance the opportunities for learning. Negative responses can virtually shut down learning for affected students. A positive interaction does not mean solely, "good job" or "I agree." For deeper engagement, postings and questions that spark the learner's curiosity or help the student integrate content with experience can be helpful too. In fact, research shows much learning is social. Therefore, interaction online with instructors and fellow students can be key motivators for learning.

An instructor approaches the cyber classroom and learners with a set of expectations, tied to emotions and bound in experience. If learners are viewed as uncooperative, lazy or disinterested, the very human instructor will undoubtedly react differently than if the students are viewed as eager, interested, dedicated and hard working. Interestingly, students readily perceive, or at least believe they perceive, the instructor's emotions and react according to those perceptions. If students begin to feel alienated or threatened, you can be sure they will stop learning, start arguing, cease participating, or perhaps drop out. This is simply the fight or flight reflex in the cyber world. This potential student reaction puts a special burden on the instructor to communicate clearly with a learner's emotions as well as content.

Best Practices

What best practices do not deal with human emotions, directly or indirectly? When we talk about adding a human element, a personal touch is surely the common denominator to add emotion. Test the notion for yourself. Think about a piece of advice you would give another online instructor. You might say, "Be sure to do X." Now ask yourself, "Does your suggestion to do X require emotional presence from the instructor, or do you expect it to create an emotional response in the learners?" Upon examination, you are likely to find your suggestion assumes an emotional component. Your suggestion, for instance, might work to smooth interaction, increase learner understanding, clarify expectations or motivate the learner.

Let's take an example. We are told, "Respond quickly to learner problems." By the time a learner has acknowledged a problem, there are already emotions at work: confusion, frustration, anger, dejection, disappointment and so forth. What happens if we are slow to respond? The emotional content most likely escalates and learning grinds to a halt as the problem overshadows whatever else the learner could be doing. What happens if you respond quickly? The learner feels acknowledged, validated and probably grateful for the attention you have shown. If you solve the problem, so much the better! But even by itself, responding quickly ameliorates the negative emotions in most cases. Learning can continue without the learner feeling isolated or being a failure!

Consider another example. We are advised to "regularly inform students of their progress." How does this relate to emotions? Students crave attention that instructors can provide; they are curious or worried or proud about their work and need to know how their assessment lines up with ours. As a result, they can be encouraged, motivated, supported or redirected with our evaluations of their work. In short, the emotions we tap with feedback can enhance the students' learning experience.

A Few Specific Hints

Starting with the course development process, make things interesting. Color, images and visual congruity are tools to evoke a pleasant environment for learning. Look at the pages as a learner would. For instance, avoid like the plague slow downloads (exasperating), full pages of narrative (boring), awkward or inconspicuous navigation aids (frustrating), or nonstop animation (irritating). Well-designed courses in a user-friendly platform go a long way to setting up positive expectations and supporting learning.

Instructors have a special obligation to take care in how they respond to their learners. Check your own emotions first. When you find yourself irritated at a "stupid" question, disappointed in a learner's misinterpretation, or frustrated with off-topic remarks in the classroom, write a response but hold on to it for a while. Reread your response, tone it down, and then send it. You can make your point yet decrease the likelihood of negatively impacting the learning process. When possible, keep it light. Remember that whatever you write is available to the learner or the whole class for days on end for them to read and reread.

Show your enthusiasm for the content and learning in general. It is contagious. Give learners reasons to care about the topic by showing that you do. Encourage their understanding by helping them personally create meaning from the class material. Point out successes and give them goals to achieve. Such actions provide emotional and social support for their learning.

Personalize your communications. Use the learner's name. Use personal examples. Ask learners to relate their learning to real life or past experience. These techniques make the interpersonal aspects of the content more emotionally accessible and enhance the learning process.

When appropriate, purposefully express your own emotions. If it fits your classroom context, use emoticons like ;-). These are shorthand ways that help clarify your facial expressions, which are otherwise missing in cyber space. Another method is writing out your emotions. For instance, you might say, "I was really impressed...," "I am confused...," "I was surprised..." or "I am happy..." Still another way of expressing emotions is describing your body language or reaction. For instance, it is clear what you mean when you write, "I laughed out loud," "My eyes grew wide," or "My fingers are eagerly flying across the keyboard in response."

Conclusion

We ignore emotions in the cyber classroom at our own risk. We may want to focus on learning outcomes, but we cannot ignore the process that facilitates or hampers those outcomes. Those who focus on cognition move in that direction when they speak of internal coding and structuring of information to understand learning, but they go on to discuss mental structures, processing, organizing, and so forth without much more than a glance at the mediator of all of these: emotions.

Many educators routinely acknowledge that thoughts, beliefs, attitudes and values influence learning. For instance, they may stress that information must be "meaningful" or "authentic," but they fail to tell us what mental process determines "meaningful" and "authentic." By and large, that is an emotion-mediated process.

Though our classes may physically consist of electrons on a computer screen, there are real people involved. That means emotions are present. Instructors and course developers who endeavor to do well in the cyber setting need to engage students in new ways, in addition to adapting methods that are successful in a traditional classroom. Our best practices in cyber space all relate to connecting the learner positively to learning itself, as well as the content, the technology, ourselves as instructors, and peers in the classroom. These connections work best when we consciously address the role of emotions in learning in the cyber classroom.

       —Charlotte A. Redden, Ph.D.

Further Reading

Gardner, Howard (1993). Multiple Intelligences: The Theory in Practice. Basic Books, New York.
Herrmann, Ned (1996). The Whole Brain Business Book. McGraw-Hill, New York.
Jensen, Eric (1998). Teaching with the Brain in Mind. Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, Alexandria, VA.
Thomas, Kenneth W. (2000). Intrinsic Motivation at Work. Berrett-Koehler, San Francisco.

TIP

Tip: Finding Files Easily

When developing a course, the importance of a good file naming system can be critical. Imagine the difficulty of managing and updating your courses if you're unable to identify the names of the files in the File Manager. This can lead to a lot of wasted time and effort.

Our suggestion is to label all course files with a Unit label and a content descriptor in the file name. For optimal efficiency, the file name should be as short as possible, without the use of spaces and special characters. For example, rather than naming a file "history_johnston.swf" or "Unit1_Presentation_History_Johnson.swf", use something like "U1PresHistJohnson.swf".

Having a consistent naming convention will make your job much simpler, and if other instructors use your courses in the future, it will make it easier for them to locate your files.

       —Jenyce Rallo