An Experimental Study of Facial Expressions in Collaborative Teams that Quit a Game-Based Learning Task: Within-Team Competition vs. No Within-Team Competition

In collaborative learning, emotions serve crucial functions that regulate task progress and social relationships among the team members. Although the research on the role of emotions in collaborative learning has been emerging, there is limited knowledge on how emotions emerge at different levels (individuals, teams) and its impact on collaborative learning, particularly when teams fail to complete a collaborative task. Therefore, the aim of this study is to explore how facial expressions of emotions unfold at the individual and the collective team level in a digital game-based learning setting in which collaborative teams eventually quit the collaborative task. A total of 30 high-school students’ emotions were captured using facial expressions software and high-resolution video cameras from beginning to the quitting of the digital game on Biology (Min = 43 min; Max = 60 min). Before the collaborative learning task, participants were randomly assigned to work in a triad involving one of two experimental conditions: 1) a within-team competition (n = 5 teams) and a no within-team competition (n = 5 teams). Utilizing FaceReader, participants’ momentary facial expressions of basic (i.e., happy, sad, anger, surprise, fear, and disgust) and neutral emotions were classified, and recurrence quantification analysis was utilized to study the recurrence of facial expressions within and between the members across the team conditions. Our findings indicate significant differences in the recurrence of facial expressions between the experimental conditions when they eventually quit the task. The current findings provide novel insights on the interplay between emotions and competitive dynamics in collaborative learning settings.