Detecting Collaborative Learning Through Emotions: An Investigation Using Facial Expression Recognition

Providing adaptive feedback to learners engaging in collaborative learning activities is one research topic in the development of intelligent tutoring systems. However, there is a need to investigate how to systematically evaluate a learner’s activities and provide feedback on them. The present study investigates how emotional states, detected through facial recognition, can be utilized to capture the learning process in a simple jigsaw-type collaborative task. It was predicted that when learners argue with each other and reason deeply, they may experience several emotional states such as positive and negative states. The results show that when learners work harder on developing a mutual understanding through conflictive interaction, negative emotions can be used to predict this process. This study contributes to the knowledge of how emotional states detected by facial recognition technology can be applied to predict learning process in conflictive tasks. Moreover, these empirical results will impact the development of adaptive feedback mechanisms for intelligent tutoring systems for collaborative learning.