ClassMood App: a classroom orchestration tool for identifying and influencing student moods

Abstract

Certain affective states are less conducive to learning than others. Moreover, results from studies suggest that a classroom’s social-emotional climate affects student motivation and performance; and that moods can be automatically transferred among individuals in a group. The ClassMood App is an online classroom orchestration tool for social emotional learning that identifies the aggregate mood of a class and suggests classroom activities for educators to help shift the class mood to one that is more conducive to learning. Suggested activities are categorized based on how they aim to impact students’ internal state of arousal. The application aims to facilitate learner and educator development of self-awareness and self-management competencies consistent with the CASEL framework for systemic social and emotional learning. Preliminary results, conducted as part of an iterative designed-based research process, suggest that the tool is perceived as being easy-to-use for both educators and undergraduate students.