Reflecting on Emotion: Design Challenges for Cooperation Technology

There is a current interest in capturing and using affective data in work and learning. In this paper we argue that cooperation technology supporting reflective learning in the workplace needs to go beyond the focus on emotion as a state and direct focus to emotion as part of a social process. We propose to focus on emotion regulation, stressing the active role of the learner in making sense of and acting upon emotions. We outline a set of related challenges for collaboration technology. 1 Emotion and emotion regulation in reflective learning Emotion is a key element of human experience enabling people to make sense of their situation and choose appropriate actions [1]. In the workplace, emotion influences work performance in various ways, for example promoting or hindering creativity. The importance of emotion for technology supported work and learning has lately been recognized in TEL [2] and CSCW [3]. The addressing of emotional aspects of work and learning with technology tends to focus on the capturing and representation of emotion considered as a state from which appropriate action can be derived. We rather suggest the need to focus on the social processes through which participants actively interpret, act upon, and manage the emotions of self and others [4]. In particular, we focus on emotion regulation [5] as the basic process whereby people seek to redirect the spontaneous flow of their emotions. For example: people engage in emotion work as part of coping with work situations [6], controlling what emotions they display and conceal; Emotion influences social judgments made by individuals and groups [7]; People use cues from similar others in emotional comparison to make sense of ambiguous situations and identify their own emotional state [8]. In our research we focus of reflective learning, i.e. learning based on rethinking work experiences [9] and we take the perspective that work and reflection are intertwined through a reflective learning cycle [10]. Emotion regulation plays a role throughout this cycle in various ways as illustrated in Figure 1. For a complete discussion of the model and grounding in relevant literature, we refer to [11]. In this position paper we discuss implications for design of cooperation technology in light of the role of emotion in work and reflection on work. Copyright © 2013 for the individual papers by the papers' authors. ECTEL meets ECSCW 2013: Workshop on Collaborative Technologies for Working and Learning, Sept. 21, 2013, Cyprus