Abstract—Affective computing is an interdisciplinary research field that has made plentiful and substantial achievements in this decade. In previous Artificial Intelligence research, computers are expected to be endowed with intelligence analogous to human intelligence. In affective computing, computers are expected to be endowed with Emotional Intelligence, which means that the computer can recognize and interpret the emotional states of humans and adapt its behavior to give an appropriate response to those emotions. This paper describes the design of an experiment that is used to collect the emotional data for a cognition & emotion support e-learning project. The goal of this experiment is to explore the interrelationship between the teacher and the student from both emotional and cognitive aspects in a teaching situation, and then construct the interaction models of the emotional and cognitive levels. These models will be integrated in an affective learning system which supports the learner both from cognitive and emotional aspects. The paper addresses issues in experimental design including ethnography, ethical and practical problems related to this form of experimental work.
Index Terms—Affective learning, data collection experiment, ethnography, contextual data.
Xiaomei Tao is with Information Science and Engineering Faculty at Guilin University of Technology, P. R. China, and she is also with Faculty of Technology, Engineering and the Environment, in Birmingham City University, UK (e-mail: txm800505@163.com).
Qinzhou Niu is with Information Science and Engineering Faculty at Guilin University of Technology, P. R. China (e-mail: djxn@glite.edu.cn).
Mike Jackson is with Business School at Birmingham City University (e-mail: Mike.Jackson@bcu.ac.uk).
Cite: Xiaomei Tao, Qinzhou Niu, and Mike Jackson, "Using an Ethnographic Approach to Collect Emotional Data in Affective Learning Research," International Journal of Information and Electronics Engineering vol. 3, no. 2, pp. 216-220, 2013.