Limited training capacity has contributed to a critical shortage of licensed commercial pilots.Adaptive educational technologies and simulators could alleviate current training bottlenecks if these technologies could assess trainee performance and provide appropriate feedback.Agents can be used to assess trainee performance, but there is insufficient guidance on how to provide concurrent feedback in simulation-based learning environments.So, we designed 4 feedback conditions that provide varying degrees of elaboration and used a within-subject study (𝑛 = 20) to compare feedback approaches.Trainee performance was best when they received highly-elaborative feedback that modeled expert behaviour.Variability in participant performance and preferences indicates a need to adapt the feedback type to individual learners and provides insight into the use of concurrent feedback in simulation-based learning environments.Specifically, learners appreciated the expert model because it facilitated a sense of control which was associated with lower negative affect and lower extraneous cognitive load.

Educational technologies have been argued to enhance specific aspects of affect, such as motivation, and through that learner experiences and outcomes. Until recently, affect has been considered separately from cognition. In this study, we investigated how learner affect (valence and activation) was tied to learner cognitive load and behaviours during game-based literacy activities. We employed experience sampling as part of a lab-based case study where 35 English language learners used an adaptive educational game. The results indicated that both positive and negative affect predicted learner cognitive load, with negative affect predicting extraneous (unnecessary) load. These results and the newly identified interaction patterns that accompanied learner affect and cognitive-load trajectories provide insight into the role of affect during learning. They show a need for considering affect when studying cognitive load and have implications for how systems should adapt to learners.