Exploring Direct Learning Instruction and External Stimuli Effects on Learner's States and Mouse/Keystroke Behaviours

A modern Intelligent Tutoring System (ITS) should be sentient of learner's cognitive and affective states, as learner’s performance could be affected by motivational and emotional factors. It is important to design a low-cost and unobtrusive computational method for ITS to determine learner's states automatically. The automated learner's data sensing is useful in the development of personalized e-learning that can adapt learning content according to individual's emotion. Although many past findings relate stressor such as task demand to learner's emotion, however there is a lack of existing studies that examine the impact of stressor on learners’ cognitive states and their mouse and keystroke dynamics. This exploratory research, conducted on 160 undergraduate students, found that the impacts of direct learning instruction and external stress stimuli, such as timer display, on learner's cognitive and affective states are significant. The correlations between direct instruction, external stimuli, learners’ cognitive and affective states, as well as their mouse and keystroke behaviours are also significant.