Investigating the Impact of Negative Emotions in High School Students' Asynchronous Online Math Discussions (Poster 43)

• In Event: AERA Poster Session Saturday 5:10 p.m.
  In Poster Session: Student Emotions, Motivation, and Teacher-Student Dynamics

Abstract

This study investigates the impact of negative emotions on high school students' learning outcomes in asynchronous online discussions (AODs). Data from 404 students in a high school-level math course reveal that approximately 32.67\% of students posted at least once with negative emotions, constituting about 10.49\% of total posts. Using both LLM-based and simple opinion-based models for emotion detection, the findings show that students with low ratios of negative posts significantly outperformed the student group who never expressed negative emotions. Conversely, students with high negative post ratios exhibited markedly lower learning outcomes. These results underscore the significant influence of the negative emotional expression ratio on student performance in AODs, highlighting the need for awareness and potential intervention in online learning environments.

Authors

• Taehyun Kim, Utah State University

• Wanli Xing, University of Florida

• Zifeng Liu, University of Florida

• Hai Li, University of Florida