Kwok, Cheng, Ip, and Kong examine the significant question of how personal affect and its relation to cognition influences learner engagement. This study provides empirical evidence to support the assertion that a relationship exists between affect and learning engagement. The authors develop a smart ambient learning environment that they call SAMAL (short for “smart ambience for affective learning”) to help perform an empirical study that tests four hypotheses related to the influence of the SAMAL scenarios on learning engagement and creativity. This work is valuable for educators, educational software designers, and instructional designers.

The authors employ the six-hat model created by de Bono [1] in 1993, which asks participants to examine a problem from six different mental mindsets represented by six different colors. In the traditional form, the participant would wear a specific hat color while examining a problem; for this study, the authors also create SAMAL environments to represent the six mental states. In the paper, they provide pictures of each SAMAL learning environment. However, the authors do not explain the reason why the scenes created for the SAMAL would create the expected emotional state. The authors refer to the Web version of the paper, which might explain this, but do not provide a link to access it. For the results to be credible, readers need to see validation that the SAMAL achieved the appropriate emotional state in participants.

The results of the study suggest that the SAMAL scenarios positively changed the learners’ affect, as perceived by the learners, and this consequently appeared to influence the participants’ learning engagement.