#450: Regulating Epistemic Emotions in CSCL: Comparing the Higher- and Lower-Performing Groups

Epistemic emotions (e.g., curiosity, surprise, confusion) are important indicators of learners’ affective engagement in computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL). While prior work studied learners’ static epistemic emotions, this study examined their dynamic, sequential patterns by comparing higher- and lower-performing groups. 44 university students participated in collaborative learning ideation tasks in dyads, where their verbal interactions were collected and coded for epistemic emotions through content analysis and sequential mining. The findings show that high-performing groups manage to channel confusion and curiosity into constructive exploration and affective closure, whereas low-performing groups often fail to resolve such tension, leading to anxiety-driven loops. It highlights the importance of evolving epistemic emotional patterns rather than static affective states to understand and optimize collaborative learning processes and outcomes.