Educational settings are emotional places where students experience diverse emotions in relation to academic activities and their outcomes. Emotions, in turn, greatly influence students’ learning process and engagement. Research on emotions in Design-Based Learning (DBL) has so far been coarse-grained examining how students evaluate their overall feelings towards the DBL project. As yet, little is known regarding how specific DBL activities influence students’ emotional experience. Therefore, we report a three-month field study of a DBL project involving 30 middle school students (aged 13–14) addressing dual research purposes: (1) to faithfully reconstruct the manner and sequence of activities during DBL from a fine-grained perspective; and (2) to examine the relationship between these activities and students’ emotional experience. This study used a mixed research method and collected multiple data sources, including experience sampling surveys, classroom observations, and interviews. The research outcomes in this study are multiple. First, this paper reveals detailed inspection regarding the types of task students performed, the strategies of shifting, and executing tasks during the process student experienced. Second, this paper identifies specific types of activities that have a significant positive or negative relationship with students’ emotional experiences. Derived from reported empirical evidence in the present study, this paper furtherly proposes an Activity-and-Affect model of DBL. This model provides a fine-grained description of DBL activity as continuous along three dimensions: task (design thinking process, project management, social interaction) task strategy (single-tasking vs. multitasking), and collaboration strategy (individual or group). Our analysis highlights the variability in how different DBL activities can be associated with different emotions.

教育环境是让学生体验与学术活动及其结果相关的各种情感的情感场所。反过来，情绪会极大地影响学生的学习过程和参与度。到目前为止，基于设计的学习（DBL）中的情感研究已经粗粒度化，以检查学生如何评估他们对DBL项目的总体感觉。迄今为止，对于特定的DBL活动如何影响学生的情感体验知之甚少。因此，我们报告了一个DBL项目的为期三个月的实地研究，涉及30名中学生（13-14岁），其目的是双重研究：（1）从细粒度的角度忠实地重建DBL活动的方式和顺序; （2）研究这些活动与学生的情绪体验之间的关系。这项研究使用了混合研究方法，并收集了多个数据源，包括经验抽样调查，课堂观察和访谈。这项研究的研究成果是多种多样的。首先，本文揭示了有关学生执行的任务类型，在学生经历的过程中转移和执行任务的策略的详细检查。其次，本文确定了与学生的情感经历有显着正向或负向关系的特定类型的活动。从本研究报告的经验证据中得出，本文进一步提出了DBL的活动与影响模型。该模型对DBL活动进行了细粒度的描述，并沿三个维度连续描述：任务（设计思维过程，项目管理，社交互动），任务策略（单任务与多任务）和协作策略（个人或小组）。我们的分析强调了不同DBL活动如何与不同情绪相关联的可变性。