Are we together or not?:the temporal interplay of monitoring, physiological arousal and physiological synchrony during a collaborative exam

Abstract The coordination of cognitive and non-cognitive interactive processes contributes to successful collaboration in groups, but it is hard to evidence in computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL). Monitoring is a metacognitive process that can be an indicator of a student’s ability to recognize success or failure in collaboration. This study focuses on how monitoring occurs in CSCL during a collaborative exam situation by examining how individual student contributions to monitoring processes are related to physiological synchrony and physiological arousal in groups. The participants were organized in four groups of three members each, and they wore sensors that measured their physiological activity. The data consist of video recordings from collaborative exam sessions lasting 90 minutes and physiological data captured from each student with Empatica 4.0 sensors. The video data were analyzed using qualitative content analysis to identify monitoring events. Students’ physiological arousal was determined through peak detection, and physiological concordance was used as an index for the students’ physiological synchrony. The individual and group level analysis investigated arousal and physiological synchrony in concordance with monitoring during the collaborative exam. The results showed that, in each group, each student contributed to joint monitoring. In addition, the monitoring activities exhibited a significant correlation with the arousal, indicating that monitoring events are reflected in physiological arousal. Physiological synchrony occurred within two groups, which experienced difficulties during the collaborative exam, whereas the two groups who had no physiological synchrony did not experience difficulties. It is concluded that physiological synchrony may be a new indicator for recognizing meaningful events in CSCL