Use of Galvanic Skin Responses, Salivary Biomarkers, and Self-reports to Assess Undergraduate Student Performance During a Laboratory Exam Activity

Abstract

Typically, self-reports are used in educational research to assess student response and performance to a classroom activity. Yet, addition of biological and physiological measures such as salivary biomarkers and galvanic skin responses are rarely included, limiting the wealth of information that can be obtained to better understand student performance. A laboratory protocol to study undergraduate students' responses to classroom events (e.g., exams) is presented. Participants were asked to complete a representative exam for their degree. Before and after the laboratory exam session, students completed an academic achievement emotions self-report and an interview that paralleled these questions when participants wore a galvanic skin sensor and salivary biomarkers were collected. Data collected from the three methods resulted in greater depth of information about students' performance when compared to the self-report. The work can expand educational research capabilities through more comprehensive methods for obtaining nearer to real-time student responses to an examination activity. Video LinkThe video component of this article can be found at

A Multimodal Exploration of Engineering Students' Emotions and Electrodermal Activity in Design Activities

“…A method based on SNS physiology, electrodermal activity (EDA), has been widely used in emotions-based research (Bouscein, 2012;D'Mello & Graesser, 2014;Harley et al, 2013;Harley et al, 2015;Villanueva et al, 2014;Villanueva, Valladares, & Goodridge, 2016). EDA is measured in locations where sweat glands are most dense (e.g., fingers, palms, or regions connecting the second and third or fourth and fifth fingers of the hand) and regions with a large number of innervated fibers that connect to the SNS.…”

“…All EDA participants were asked to wear a clean wrist band 1 hr before the start of each engineering design method workshop topic to create enough sweat build-up on their wrists to gather baseline EDA data (Nourbakhsh, Wang, & Chen, 2013;Nourbakhsh, Wang, Chen, & Calvo, 2012;Paletta, Pittino, Schwarz, Wagner, & Kallus, 2015;Shi, Ruiz, Taib, Choi, & Chen, 2007;Sinha, Gavas, Chatterjee, Das, & Sinharay, 2015;Villanueva, Raikes, Ruben, Schaefer, & Gunther, 2014;Villanueva et al, 2016). Ten minutes before class, a member of the research team fitted an Empatica E3 EDA sensor (Empatica, Boston, MA) on each participant and recorded the sensor identification number.…”

Small Group Learning is Associated with Reduced Salivary Cortisol and Testosterone in Undergraduate Students

“…Circulating cortisol levels increase in response to physical and psychological activation; thus, it is used as a biomarker of a stress response (Kirschbaum, Pirke, & Hellhammer, 1993;Lighthall, Gorlick, Schoeke, Frank, & Mather, 2013;McEwen, 1998;Stephens, Mahon, McCaul, & Wand, 2016). While other measures of stress exist, including serum cortisol, galvanic skin response, heart rate, and blood pressure (Campbell & Ehlert, 2012;Villanueva, Valladares, & Goodridge, 2016), these other measures typically are utilized within laboratory settings due to the need for aseptic techniques, machines, or continuous sensor leads connected to individual participants throughout the evaluation process. In contrast, the use of salivary cortisol readily lends itself to the formal classroom setting where less-invasive and least restrictive environmental conditions are desired to enable the simultaneous evaluation of many students.…”

An Initial Exploration of Engineering Students’ Emotive Responses to Spatial and Engineering Statics Problems

“…Villanueva and colleagues have reported using self-reports with electrodermal activity sensors [19], [20] while Goodridge, Call, and colleagues have used electroencephalogram monitors [21], [22] to study performance in an engineering statics course. Each study has developed methods to identify how the type of exam problem could influence the activation of students' pre-frontal cortex and EDA arousal [19]- [22], which influence student performance and learning of different engineering problems.…”

“…Villanueva and colleagues have reported using self-reports with electrodermal activity sensors [19], [20] while Goodridge, Call, and colleagues have used electroencephalogram monitors [21], [22] to study performance in an engineering statics course. Each study has developed methods to identify how the type of exam problem could influence the activation of students' pre-frontal cortex and EDA arousal [19]- [22], which influence student performance and learning of different engineering problems. Some electroencephalography (EEG) research and theory such as that found in the neural efficiency hypothesis seek to identify periods of focus in study participants and when considered in context with academic emotion data collection [23] may yield important information about a student's performance on an exam in real-time.…”