Emotions in university learning supported in virtual environments: differences according to learning activity and students’ motivation

Abstract

This paper presents the results of an educational innovation project, whose aim is to describe the emotions that students put into play in different learning activities supported by a virtual environment. 143 students in an undergraduate course of Education Studies participated in this research. To do this, we carried out a survey study with a Likert scale about experienced emotions and Osgood semantic differential about attitudes towards learning activity. The scale shows a highly valid measure of students’ emotional experience and has acceptable reliability indices for measuring emotional wellbeing optimal indices for measuring emotional distress. The variables studied are: experienced emotions, attitude towards tasks, level of interest towards the subject and its perceived difficult The results show that students experience positive emotions such as relief and enthusiasm at the same time as negative emotions such as stress and worry, detecting differences in emotional experience depending on the type of activity, level of interest towards the academic subject and its perceived difficulty.