In digital education, students are often required to engage with complex content independently and under high-pressure conditions, contexts that can elevate stress and hinder learning. This presentation shares findings from a recent MPhil project (supervised by Associate Professors Nadine Marcus and Gelareh Mohammadi at UNSW) investigating the effects of socially induced stress on student learning within a technology-based introductory coding module.

The study integrates perspectives from psychology, education, and human-computer interaction (HCI), focusing on how stress-inducing tasks influence cognitive load and performance. The current work presents results from a sample of female-identifying students, a group shown in prior literature to be more susceptible to anxiety in academic contexts. Key findings reveal that induced stress significantly impacts learning performance, supporting the need for emotionally adaptive learning design to better support vulnerable student groups.

This session will highlight the ethical and practical use of short-term stress induction as a diagnostic tool to explore learning barriers in digital environments. Rather than focusing solely on stress reduction, the research positions controlled stress as a lens to understand emotional-cognitive interactions in learning.

Physiological data (e.g., heart rate variability and galvanic skin responses) and results from the male sample will be discussed in future work. These forthcoming insights are expected to deepen understanding of individual differences in emotional and cognitive responses to stress in learning.

By addressing the emotional dimensions of digital learning, this research contributes to developmental and educational psychology by informing more inclusive, emotionally responsive educational practices that enhance both well-being and academic success.

After this event, attendees will be able to:

- Understand how acute stress can be ethically induced in technology-based learning environments and its implications for student learning.

- Analyse findings from a female-identifying participant sample to explore how stress impacts performance in digital education.

- Evaluate how early insights from this research can inform the design of more responsive and supportive educational strategies, particularly for students vulnerable to anxiety.

- Reflect on the potential role of controlled stress induction as both a learning barrier and a diagnostic tool within educational psychology.

These outcomes will be measured through reflective discussion, engagement with presented findings, and application to relevant educational scenarios.

Attendees are encouraged to consider how these insights could inform their own practice in supporting learner wellbeing and performance.