This study examined the effectiveness of two different interventions designed to reduce student disengagement when using an Intelligent Tutoring System (ITS) to learn college-level mathematics. Both interventions used an emotion regulation strategy called formative reappraisal (FR), which used formative feedback processes to deliver just-in-time cognitive reappraisals to students about their performance. The first FR intervention used a utility value reappraisal, which was designed to help students reframe their understanding of the value of the current learning task. The second FR intervention used a cognitive reappraisal designed to help students better understand the difficulty and challenge of the current task. The study was conducted with community college students (N = 136) randomly assigned to one of three groups (utility value FR, cognitive challenge FR, and no treatment condition) such that each group had students with a strong comprehension of geometry and those with a weak understanding. Three dependent variables were used to evaluate the effectiveness of the FR interventions: affective engagement, behavioral engagement, and learning.Results show that students in both FR conditions had a statistical improvement in affective engagement and behavioral engagement in round one compared to the no treatment group. Also, the post-test scores, used to measure learning outcomes, were significantly higher for the FR conditions compared to the no treatment condition. Additionally, no interaction effects were found between FR conditions and students with strong and weak geometry comprehension.The study results reinforce the associations and mediating mechanisms proposed by Pekrun's control-value theory. Using the FR emotion regulation as an approach to influence students’ cognitive control and value appraisals was beneficial to these learners based on measurements of the dependent variables. Findings regarding FR suggested an emotion regulation strategy that uses a mix of antecedent-focused and response-focused strategies can decrease disengagement and increase meaningful learning for students using an ITS. There is a rapid growth in school systems using ITSs to deliver instruction, and these findings lay the groundwork for further studies to explore improving human-computer interaction.
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