Positive Affect for Virtual Social Learning

At its most basic, learning comes from engagement with the world around us (for instance; engagement with materials, people, places etc.). Whilst various desires drive the need to engage, underpinning it all is our affective systems without which such drives would not exist nor would we be able to appraise what we should engage in anyway.

Recent findings from neuroscience strengthen the psychological theories concerning affect and its relation to learning processes. Positive affect is increasingly being shown to positively influence cognitive performance.

Understanding how our affective systems are influenced by virtual social learning allows one to develop design frameworks that scaffold positive affect and lessen the impact of negative affect.

It is these issues which are being explored in my current research.

Additionally I still maintain research interests into serious games for education.