Measuring Emotion in Education Using GSR and HR Data from Wearable Devices

Abstract

The essential role of emotions in education is widely valued, which has attracted enormous interest in emotion recognition. Wearable devices that collect real-time and fine-gained subjective physiological data make it possible to complex emotional dynamics in education. However, less studies are known about its potential role in examining the emotional changes of different levels of students under specific pedagogical actions in face-to-face chess classroom. Throughout objective GSR and HR data from wearable devices and subjective data from students and teachers in chess classrooms, it is found students at different levels had experienced different emotions for the same pedagogical actions. Moreover, teachers should pay more attention to grasping the teaching content of students at different levels, setting appropriate challenges of difficulty, and using brackets and prompts at appropriate times for challenging assignments. These findings evidence the feasibility of data analysis model of wearable devices but also serve as a reference point and future investigations on the explanation of how and why students’ emotions varied of more specific pedagogical actions in education.