Digital Tools Evolving to Track Students' Emotions, Mindsets: Effects of Emotion on Cognition

In the article Digital Tools Evolving to Track Students' Emotions, Mindsets written by Benjamin Herold, academic researchers are now exploring new ways to actually track a student's emotions while they are put into a learning situation. Cognitive learning is closely linked with a student's emotions and attitudes, so researchers are now looking to develop new technologies to actually read a student's emotion as they are progressing through a technological learning program. The program will then be prompted to assist them depending on their current state of mind. Therefore if a child is struggling, the program might offer the child a hint and tell them "good job" after they have successfully completed the task. There is still no technology of this matter on the immediate horizon (estimated about a decade away), but developers are currently working towards creating this type of technology in order to understand how a student might perform a certain way based on their emotions.

Herold writes this article as an informative to his audience, and does not offer much of his personal opinion on the matter. Personally I think that this type of technology potentially has both good and bad aspects to it. It could be a good tool if it is used as a tool for gathering research data, so that people can actually better understand how a student's emotions might effect their cognition (wether that is in an "in-the-moment" type of scenario or a long term issue). If teachers can better understand how their students perform under emotional pressures (ex: test anxiety) then perhaps teachers and educational policy makers can create new curriculums to better assist students to meet their educational needs.



On the contrary however, I do not believe that this technology should be used as a replacement of educators in any way, shape or form. I do not think that a computer telling a student that they did well has the same impact on them as it would if a teacher or tutor told them that they did well. There is just no comparison between the two when it comes to actually gaining a real feeling of accomplishment. Would you feel more accomplished if you were given a problem that you did not know how to solve, and a teacher helped guide you and then praised you afterwards? Or would you feel better if a cartoon character on a screen just gave you hints based on difficulty that you are having, and gave you a thumbs up afterwards? Personally, I would rather have the approval of the human being. I think the relationship between a teacher and student is a very personal one and that it is required in order to have a truly positive learning experience.

Regarding ISTE Standards for Students, this article can relate mostly to ISTE Standards 1, 3 and 6. The ISTE Standard one delves into technology and its creative applications. This technology will be horrendously innovative and I can not wait to watch the controversy unfold as to how it is used in the future. It also relates to ISTE Standard three as the technology is going to be working with students to gather information and research in order to (hopefully!) better serve students of the future. The topic also relates closely to ISTE Standard six as the topic relates entirely on new technology and the possible controversy surrounding its future uses. I would also be curious to see how the technology itself might have issues, and if it did have bugs or gave out improper signals how much that might affect a student's results if they were using it as a learning tool.

What do you think? Should we be using technology that relates emotions to a student's cognitive well-being? If so, to what extent should this technology be used?

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Herold, Benjamin. (2016, January). Digital Tools Evolving to Track Students' Emotions, Mindsets. http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2016/01/13/digital-tools-evolving-to-track-students-emotions.html