Fostering Emotional Intelligence in Online Higher Education Courses

Emotional Intelligence, Course Design, and Instruction

Emotional intelligence can be incorporated into course design and instruction in a variety of ways. Specifically, we advocate that the instructors model emotional intelligence through their own behavior, and through the design, facilitation, and management of learning to help learners develop this skill through observation (Bandura, 1992; Shabani, Khatib, & Ebadi, 2010). For example, the instructor can show emotional perception and understanding of learners’ need for emotional safety by creating clear guidelines for the respectful discussion of sensitive class topics and for managing differences and possible conflict. This is particularly important when discussing controversial issues related to age, gender, gender identification, and race/ethnicity. The goal of these guidelines should be to create a safe classroom environment which welcomes and engages a wide range of viewpoints, maintains respect for all, and promotes collaborative learning. This can provide a good training ground for helping students develop emotional perception and emotional understanding which are important for real-world management and leadership roles. The instructor can act as a role model of these guidelines, showing learners the importance of respectful aging-services leadership behaviors, emphasizing dialogue about diverse perspectives. Specific guidelines include the following (University of Denver, Office of Teaching and Learning: Creating an Inclusive Classroom, http://otl.du.edu/teaching-resources/creating-an-inclusive-classroom/):

Also included could be instructions for cultivating mindfulness as such practices can promote emotional intelligence and cognitive learning (Barner & Barner, 2011; Bonamo, Legerski, & Thomas, 2015; Charoensukmongkol, 2014; Ciarrochi & Godsell, 2006; Jennings, 2016). For example, learners could complete a short mindful walk or a guided mindfulness meditation exercise found at UCLA Mindful Awareness Research Center’s (2017) website (http://marc.ucla.edu/body.cfm?id=22).

The instructor can demonstrate emotional perception and emotional understanding by designing instruction which piques learners’ interest and encourages positive activating emotions such as curiosity and joy (Pekrun & Stephens, 2010). Knowles (2012) acknowledges adults learn best when they perceive that the learning experience will help them solve some real problems in their current situation or in their immediate future. One strategy used to help develop student’s emotional perception and emotional understanding in the Aging People, Policy, and Management undergraduate course is having students work with lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) elders to create digital stories about these elders’ experiences in a UMBC College of Engineering and Information Technology’s (2016) project. This provides students an experiential learning opportunity to learn about the strengths and challenges of LGBT elders in an authentic context. Another strategy is the use of narrative to illustrate how historical events impact the life course in the Aging People, Policy, and Management course. The course uses the story of Eva Kor, a Holocaust Survivor (Candles Holocaust Museum and Education Center, 2017; https://candlesholocaustmuseum.org/eva-kor/her-story.html), which illustrates how the Holocaust and Eva’s own strength and resilience shaped her life course. This helps students cultivate emotional perception and understanding of how difficult events and individual decisions impact one’s life course. The use of narrative may be used in courses in other disciplines to help students understand the needs, feelings, and experiences of others, helping students to cultivate emotional perception and emotional understanding.

Purposeful course design and presentation of important concepts can help learners avoid cognitive overload and ego depletion (R. Mayer & Clark, 2011; Moreno & Mayer, 2007), and demonstrate the instructors’ use of emotional perception, emotional understanding, and emotional facilitation. Implementing these concepts can help learners keep negative activating emotions such as frustration to a manageable level and encourage self-regulation (Pekrun & Stephens, 2010). To assist learning, material may be presented both verbally and visually (Moreno, 2010; Moreno & Mayer, 2007).

Materials may be strengthened by following Moreno and Mayer’s (2007) instructional design principles which promote self-regulation and include the following:

Learning tasks can be designed in ways that encourage a mastery approach to learning goals. This encourages the development of cognitive self-appraisals whereby the learner controls academic outcomes (Pekrun & Stephens, 2010) and facilitates the management of challenging emotions as they relate to learning. This, in turn, can encourage the broadening of attention, leading to increasing flexibility and creativity with further cognitive processing (Conway, Tugade, Catalino, & Frederickson, 2013). These qualities are important to innovative thinking, effective decision making, and understanding of oneself and others.

The instructor can use emotional perception and emotional understanding in apprising learners that they may experience difficult emotional reactions with the discussion of some topics and learning activities. This is especially true in asynchronous online courses where participants are often challenged with a new way of sensing “affect” (e.g., seeing facial expression, hearing verbal and nonverbal cues) as a means for interpreting and communicating messages with others in their virtual learning environment. The instructor can emphasize that while these emotional reactions may be challenging, they are a normal part of learning that learners can anticipate as they interact with course material and other learners, and need to be acknowledged and managed (Pekrun & Stephens, 2010). This helps learners to pay close attention to and understand and normalize their emotional reactions as they occur, helping learners to develop emotional intelligence.

The instructor can demonstrate emotional perception and emotional understanding by helping learners to appreciate that there are often controversial, complex issues in aging-services management for which there are no clear-cut right or wrong answers. Rather, there are often different yet equally valid perspectives. Introducing this kind of reframing of an issue encourages learners to loosen their emotional attachment to being “right” and may help learners manage challenging emotions, a critical skill for managers and leaders. Also, it can engender integrative thinking by synthesizing different perspectives, a characteristic of exceptional leaders (Martin, 2007). The practice of unpacking prior knowledge, beliefs, and values to formulate new perspectives and attitudes is a transformational process that aims to reframe existing schema to fit the novel context.

The instructor could encourage learners to be mindful of the process of their own and other learners’ ways of thinking about issues rather than outcomes of thinking such as opinions. Stimulating this kind of awareness can help learners be mindful of how emotional arousal that may occur with the discussion of sensitive issues can influence one’s understanding (Mather & Sutherland, 2011). This lures learners away from a black and white, right-or-wrong, perspective to one that appreciates the process through which viewpoints may be formed and the different reference points of others based on different life experiences. This may help learners to be more open to varying viewpoints, facilitating learners’ emotional perception and emotional understanding, and achieving cognitive learning goals such as critical thinking. For example, in an online graduate course, Diversity in Management of Aging Services, learners share diverse perspectives and opinions about issues in aging-services settings in written assignments and discussion boards. The instructor responds to learners with comments which purposefully guide students to focus on the process through which they have formed their perspectives. Specifically, the instructor encourages learners to examine the impact of formative life experiences and stresses these experiences may differ by genders/gender identifications, socioeconomic statuses, cultures, and sexual orientations. The instructor can pose questions encouraging learners to more deeply consider how their own social identities may contribute to how they view potentially controversial issues (Derks & Stedehouder, 2015; Reynolds, Haslam, & Turner, 2012). This use of this strategy extends beyond this particular course as it can be used to help learners in other disciplines, especially those in people-oriented disciplines such as leadership/management, social work, and nursing, and understand their social identities, how these are learned through a socialization process, and how this contributes to the development of their attitudes toward those who are different from them.

Emotional Intelligence and Facilitated Discussions

Discussion assignments in which learners are asked to use a brief mindfulness meditation exercise can help them to be aware of their emotions, thus preparing learners to address challenging topics with patience and self-efficacy (Garland, Farb, Goldin, & Frederickson, 2015; Sharp & Jennings, 2015; Tang, Tang, & Posner, 2016; Vago & Silbersweig, 2012; Wang & Zhao, 2015). Mindfulness can help learners attend to issues they may not otherwise notice due to preconceptions and biases (Bazerman, 2014). This can pave the way for “thinking slow,” a quality characterized by consciously attending to information and being open to evidence, even when these may contradict one’s preconceptions and beliefs (Kahneman, 2013) such as ageist stereotypes.

When the instructor sees learners’ negative emotional reactions regarding differences in perspectives, the instructor can respond to learners in ways that help them to be aware of and understand these reactions. For example, when conflict with differences arises in a discussion board, the instructor could actively and empathically listen to learners and help them identify and communicate underlying emotions (e.g., fears and desires) that are triggered by the conflict (Cloke & Goldsmith, 2005). The instructor could remind learners that there are different valid perspectives and help learners see that the journey to resolving differences lies not in debate about who is right but in understanding the meaning that various positions have for individuals and in fulfilling important needs (Cloke & Goldsmith, 2005). This aims to facilitate learning by helping learners to enlarge their capacity for empathy and manage their own emotions when discussing sensitive class topics. Also, the instructor could apprise learners that managing differences and conflicts, while necessary, can be a messy, uncomfortable process as it requires dealing with challenging emotions, ambiguity, and uncertainty (Cloke & Goldsmith, 2005). This may help learners have a better understanding of, and less discomfort, with conflict, leading to enhanced emotional intelligence and learning.

The Starter–Wrapper technique (Hara, Bonk, & Angeli, 2000) in discussion boards may enhance emotional perception, emotional management, and learning. The learner who is the “Starter” takes the lead and poses questions and comments designed to cultivate emotional intelligence and learn about specific topics. For example, when discussing the movie, Driving Miss Daisy, in the Diversity and Aging Services course, the Starter could pose discussion questions that spark exploration of social identities of the older main characters in the movie, Hoke and Miss Daisy, how different social identities of the characters may influence their experience of aging, and how social advantage and disadvantage may have contributed to disparate outcomes for different characters in the movie. The Starter could pose questions about what it was like for them to see the advantage and/or disadvantage experienced by the two older movie characters due to their social identities. This application of learning helps learners cultivate awareness and understanding of their own and others’ emotions related to the theme. The Starter could encourage other learners to share their ideas and feelings about the issues posed and respond to other learners’ posts in ways which encourage emotional awareness and understanding. The “Wrapper” would then summarize, integrate, and formulate implications of ideas and emotions shared in the discussion board, activating higher level thinking and fostering emotional intelligence. For example, the Wrapper could point to commonalities and differences in learners’ feelings related to the characters in the movie and pose comments that go beyond the current discussion board postings to help learners develop empathy for others’ feelings. This would serve to strengthen emotional awareness and understanding in learners and enhance their ability to manage challenging emotions which can facilitate learning. This approach which uses narrative in the form of film and the Starter–Wrapper technique could be used in other courses, especially those in people-oriented academic disciplines to help learners understand and empathize with the emotional world of others.

Emotional intelligence, specifically, emotional perception and emotional understanding, could also be promoted by using a discussion board, for example, to focus on cultures of formal (professional) and informal (family) caregiving. The Starter could pose questions or scenarios related to different cultures of caregiving, and encourage learners to share experiences and feelings about having been and/or known a formal and/or informal caregiver. The Starter could pose comments which help learners understand how differences may arise due to different cultures of caregiving. The instructor could provide feedback to help learners develop more awareness and understanding of their emotional reactions to the issues and to others who with different or controversial viewpoints, promoting emotional intelligence and learning.

Emotional Intelligence and Written Assignments

Written assignments can be designed to help learners develop emotional intelligence. For example, instructors could use mastery and/or performance learning goals to promote emotional management as it relates to learning. Specifically, in the online undergraduate course, Aging People, Management, and Policy, learners complete an interview with an Older Adult paper, which incorporates mastery learning goals and stimulates positive activating emotions such as curiosity and lowering negative emotions such as frustration. The assignment includes steps where learners submit references, outline, draft, and final paper. Learners receive feedback on each step, and the opportunity to revise and resubmit their outlines and drafts. This instills mastery learning goals and emphasizes effort-oriented attributions as opposed to ability-oriented attributions for success and nonsuccess. By using feedback to improve their work, learners experience success as a result of persistence and effort, thus promoting an internal locus of control with learning (Dweck, 2007). Negative emotion is kept to a manageable level and positive emotion is enhanced, promoting emotional management as it relates to learning.

To prepare learners to empathically listen to older adults whom they interview, learners complete reflection papers to cultivate listening skills and emotional intelligence. For the first reflection paper, learners slowly read the article, Deep Listening, at http://www.contemplativemind.org/practices/tree/deep-listening (Center for Contemplative Mind in Society, 2015). Second, they complete a guided mindfulness meditation, Mindfulness of Breath, Sound, and Body Meditation (12 min) at UCLA’s Mindful Awareness Research Center (2017) at http://marc.ucla.edu/body.cfm?id=22. These preexercise activities are intended to help students tap into (activate) their thoughts, feelings, and sensations during the exercise.

As part of the second reflection paper, learners interview one another with guiding questions. Then learners respond to reflection questions about their experience of listening and being listened to. These exercises employ strategies to help learners cultivate an awareness of themselves, their listening skills, and an awareness of others. This prepares them to conduct interviews with an older adult of their choosing for a paper in which they compare what they learned from their interviews with what they learned from scholarly literature on aging-related topics.

Another example of a written assignment to help learners cultivate perception, understanding, and management of emotions related to the process and content of learning is a reflection paper required for Diversity in Management of Aging services, an online graduate course. This assignment focuses on the identification of one’s own identities, social positionalities, and the socialization process through which these are learned so they become more aware of how theirs and others’ attitudes are shaped. Learners complete a mindfulness exercise, then respond to reflection questions which require an in-depth analysis of their own social positionality, patterns of advantage and disadvantage, how they learned their social identities, and how this may influence how they relate to others with identities different from their own. Learners also explore how the exercise may influence their own perspectives on what constitutes effective leadership in working within the longevity economy, defined as the demographic of people over 50, whose spending patterns increasingly affect social and economic policies (Oxford Economics for AARP 2013). This reflection paper heightens learners’ awareness of feelings about their own and others’ social identities. Learners better understand how their own emotions may influence judgments, and how others may define effective leadership (Grant, Kinman, & Alexander, 2014). This kind of experiential strategy in which learners describe (What is being examined?), analyze (What is most important, interesting, and relevant about their own and others’ social identities? How are one’s social identities different from and similar to those of others? How might this be explained by a theoretical model?), and evaluate (What have I learned from this? What does this mean for my future? How might I more positively reframe my attitudes?) can be used in courses in different disciplines to help learners identify how their social positionality affects their life experiences and affects their emotional perception and emotional understanding of those who are different from them.

With these holistic course design and instructional strategies, the instructor uses knowledge of emotional intelligence to help learners in management of aging-services courses cultivate emotional intelligence and cognitive learning. Through course design and instruction, instructors use aspects of their own emotional intelligence (e.g., emotional perception, emotional understanding, and emotional management) to help learners become more aware of and able to effectively manage their own emotions in their relationships with others, especially with challenging issues in workplace. This prepares learners to work with emotional issues that may relate, for example, to increasingly diverse client populations and professionals with whom they may work. Furthermore, the instructor uses emotional facilitation to engage learners in learning activities and to support self-regulating with their own learning. Thus, the instructor’s ability to demonstrate aspects of emotional intelligence in different elements of course design and instruction is key to helping learners cultivate emotional intelligence, an important competence in management and leadership.