Analyzing student action sequences and affect while playing physics playground

Physics Playground is an educational game that supports physics learning. It accepts multiple solutions to most problems and does not impose a stepwise progression through the content. Assessing student performance in an open-ended environment such as this is therefore challenging. This study investigates the relationships between student action sequences and affect among students using Physics Playground. The study identified most frequently traversed student action sequences and investigated whether these sequences were indicative of either boredom or confusion. The study found that boredom relates to poor performance outcomes, and confusion relates to sub-optimal performance, as evidenced by the significant correlations between the respective affective states, and the student action sequences.