Do you want to be a superhero? Boosting emotional states with the booth

Abstract

Educational practitioners have stressed the relevance of providing learners with a set of 21th century skills that will allow them to face current life challenges. Among others this includes communication and social skills such as public speaking, argumentation, negotiation, etc. Besides the acquisition of knowledge and techniques, these skills have the special characteristic that their performance is usually conducted under emotionally charged and stressful situations. Recent advances in technology have allowed the creation of digital applications to support learners with the development of techniques for this type of skills. However, supporting learners on the preparation of a mindset that allows them to perform well under emotionally charged circumstances is an area that technology enhanced learning has practically overlooked. To examine this gap, we developed the Booth, an application designed to get learners into a powerful and resourceful emotional state. In this article we present a two-step user study. Results of the first evaluation show that the use of the Booth induced a positive emotional state on users. Results from the second step suggest that using the Booth helps learners to emotionally prepare for public speaking.