Ley de Bomberos

• Emotionis analogous to the state of mind that is only momentary. It is influenced by the personality type and mood.

Appraising Process

Emotion

Mood

Personality

Environment

Figure 6.2Relations between personality mood and emotion

Appraising process appraises the emotional effects such that these effects act on mood space and emotion space under the influence of personality see figure 6.2. In the next sections we will describe this model in more details and explain the relation between these parameters and learning process.

6.4

Student Personality

The term Personality is defined as a permanent pattern of characteristics that discriminates between people in their feeling thought and behavior [145]. A person’s Personality is a constant but reflects the way that s/he can pursue during the appraisal and coping with the incoming events.

A Student’s personality is an important issue in the educational process. It has effects on a studen- t’s cognitive ability, behavior, motivation, emotion, mood, and preferred learning style. Besides, the student interacts with the incoming event according to his/her personality. Thus, students with

different personality types differ in their appraisal and their way of coping. To summarize, person- alizing the learning process is necessary for a more efficient process. Although there is progress in the recent years regarding intelligent tutoring systems and the course generation field in general, there is very little attention on the consideration of the student personality, mood, and emotion during the learning process.

Accordingly, the student’s personality is considered as a key factor in our approach. It has different concerns in our approach. Thus, it helps us to expect a student’s response in different situations, foresee the degree of stress, specify their preferring learning style, deduce the motivational goal and define the best coping strategy. Furthermore, the personality of a student will be evidence to the appropriate learning scenario, appraisal, and coping way. In the next subsection we will define the personality types which we considered.

6.4.1

Types of personality

There are different models of personality, but the big five factors of personality, or OCEAN model is the most usable one [146]. The five factors are considered to be the dimensions of the personality space. This model is proposed not only for a general understanding of human behavior but also for psychologists treating with personality disorders. This model defines the following factors; Extroversion (E), Neuroticism (N), Conscientiousness (C), Agreeableness(A) and openness(O). The model states that these five factors form the basis of the personality space; one should be able to represent any personality as a combination of these factors. The test of the big five factors of personality is used to evaluate these factors [146]. These types can be defined as follows;

• Extraversion (opposed to introversion): Extroverts are sociable, talkative, assertive, and energetic. They prefer to behave in social situations.

6.4 Student Personality 125

impulsivity, insecurity, emotional, distress, self-consciousness, illogical thinking, depres- sion, low self-esteem, nervousness, and are inclined repetition and anger. Generally, they have the tendency to experience negative thoughts.

• Conscientiousness (opposed to negligent): These people are organized, dutiful, methodi- cal, efficient, reliable, persistent, and persevere pursuing their goals. They also think well before making a decision, studying all possible outcome.

• Openness (oppressed to close): These people are opened minded, creative, and imaginative.

• Agreeableness (opposed to antagonistic): These persons are trusting, cooperative, behave and interact in a kind and friendly way with others and usually place a higher priority on the goals of other’s than on their own.

Note that, in our system we considered the first three factors. Meanwhile, it is worth mentioning the relationship between the Five Factor Model of personality traits and learning. This relation is as follows:

• Conscientiousness; this traits is related to a high work discipline, interest in the subject matter, and concentration. Persons with this trait care about their working conditions and have clear goals regarding their studies. Also, they use a strategic approach, are good at organizing and managing their work and time, and work hard in their studies. Usually, they have an intrinsic motivation and positive study attitude [147]. Conscientiousness is related to preference of thought-provoking documents instead of documents which confirm previous ideas and use their effort in information seeking. One central feature of conscientiousness is self-control, with a capacity to carry out tasks. Conscientious people are strong-willed and determined to achieve and academically. The conscientious students are willing to meet this challenge with their usual willingness to work hard. This persistence may prove usefulness in the academic context. The conscientious students were indeed shown to obtain good study

results. Easygoing students with low levels of conscientiousness often chose their informa- tion sources on the basis of easy access with the use of minimum effort and thoroughness. These students can be described as easily distracted, careless, impulsive, and hasty.

• Neuroticism : This type of personality is linked to the lack of concentration, stress, fear of failure. Moreover, neuroticism is linked to lack of the ability to understand how things relate to each other. This can be linked to the surface learning style. The student with a surface approach concentrates on memorization without any concern of finding a deeper meaning of understanding. They are most concerned on getting through exams and are not really interested in the material itself. Their motivation is extrinsic and they take on a strategic, or syllabus-bound approach to studying. Negative emotions consume energy, distract concentration, and could be an initial obstacle to success. Feelings of anxiety tend to enforce an escaping reaction to a threatening situation where there is a history of failure. The lack of time can be a reality but people may also vary according to how strongly they perceive time pressure and how they act upon it. Research has shown that persons with high levels of neuroticism drop in stressful situations. However, it should be pointed out that temporary states of worry and insecurities can in some circumstances enhance performance. Although strong negative emotions can distract the attention off the actual task, it can also be a means of concentration on familiar tasks and, in this way, in fact enhance performance. Whether there is a basic insecurity about what is relevant or not, new information can appear too challenging. Students who faced relevance problems were shown to prefer documents which confirmed old knowledge to new thought-provoking documents. Students with high levels of neuroticism are more vulnerable to the strain of many conflicting messages and, accordingly, prefer less confusing information. This is a way of increasing the feeling of control and the confidence of sufficient topical knowledge which is particularly relevant to insecure persons. Previous research has shown that the more secure people are, the more