Emotions in flipped and lecture-based math courses

Background Emotions play an important role in learning. Activating teaching methods, such as flipped learning, can provide positive learning experiences but also pose emotional challenges to students. Aims This intensive longitudinal study investigated 1) how students’ emotional valence before a learning event, learning mode (individual, peer, teacher-led), teaching implementation (lecture-based vs. flipped), and physiological arousal (electrodermal activity, EDA) during the learning event related to emotional valence after a learning event, and 2) how EDA varies across within-event segments and teaching implementations during learning events. Sample Participants were 69 students enrolled in an engineering mathematics course implemented either as lecture-based ( n = 34) or flipped learning ( n = 35). Methods Students reported their emotional states via a smartphone application and wore smart rings to measure EDA. A series of multilevel binomial logistic regression and linear mixed-effects models were analyzed across 546 learning events, totaling 827 h of data. Results Positive pre-event emotional valence predicted positive post-event emotional valence. Teacher-led events were associated with more positive post-event emotional valence than individual events, particularly in the lecture-based group. The main effect of the teaching implementation was not significant. EDA did not show robust associations with post-event emotional valence; however, lecture-based events showed a clearer decline in EDA across event segments than flipped learning events. Conclusions The results highlight the importance of supporting social and individual learning processes and examining physiological arousal as a temporal learning-event process rather than a simple proxy for post-event emotional valence.