13Augmenting the Educational Process Using a Prototype Bio-Feedback Device for Anxiety Awareness Hippokratis Apostolidis, Panagiotis Stylianidis, Thrasyvoulos Tsiatsos.Department of Informatics, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, GR-54124, Thessaloniki, GreeceTel.: (+30) 2310 998990, fax: (+30) 2310 998419 e-mail:aposti, pastylia, tsiatsoscsd.auth.grABSTRACTStudents anxiety recognition might be approved a significant support providing self-regulation and teaching and coaching quality. From physiology it is known that high anxiety is usually resulting in increasing skin conductivity to electrical current. Furthermore, people under stressful conditions usually show increased heart-rate values. The purpose of this paper is the presentation of a prototype device that measures the anxiety level of a person by collecting bio-signals. This device has been the evaluated by persons engaged in learning activities in order to investigate whether and how it could augment the educational process. This work concludes that students anxiety recognition and regulation seems to be an important factor in implementing personalized learning activities.Keywords: bio-signals, bio-feedback, emotion detection, anxiety awareness, personalized learning.1. IntroductionGeneral speaking bio-feedback is a means for gaining control of our body processes to increase relaxation, relieve pain, and develop healthier, more comfortable life patterns (Wall, 2004). Biofeedback gives us information about ourselves by means of external instruments. Biofeedback training familiarizes the person with the activity in his/her various body systems and therefore s/he may learn to control this activity to relieve stress and improve health. Educational activities in complex learning context produce negative or positive emotions. Stress is such an emotion that might have an impact on the educational activity and learning outcome. Therefore, students stress level self-awareness and self-regulation is a major issue in the educational process. Furthermore, students stress level awareness by the tutor could help the tutor to adapt the educational approach in order to promote the students positive emotions.The recent interest in the link between emotions and learning is based on the assumption that deep learning is not entirely limited to cognition, discourse, action, and the environment because emotions or affective states are inextricably bound to the learning process (Lepper and Henderlong, 2000; Linnenbrink and Pintrich, 2002; Meyer and Turner, 2006; Stein and Hernandez, 2007; DMello et al. 2009). A very important feature of learning environments is the support provided to students and to the instructor. The emotion recognition in many cases can be considered as students motivation in order to regulate their emotional state or trying to relax their team-mates in cases of high anxiety during collaborative learning activities. This chapter aims (a) to identify whether anxiety awareness can motivate the students to regulate their emotions; (b) to explore if a well-known bio-feedback technique (i.e. diaphragmatic breathing) supports the students supported to regulate their stress lever; (c) to evaluate students acceptance of bio-feedback device and sensors during a learning activity; and (d) to examine the usefulness of students anxiety awareness for the teacher. The chapter is structured as follows: The next section is devoted to student academic emotions and adaptive learners support. Then, the bio-feedback device for anxiety awareness is described. Section 4 presents a pilot study that has taken place in order to evaluate the usefulness of the bio-feedback device for the educational activities. The last section presents the concluding remarks and our vision fo the next steps.2. Student Emotions and Adaptive Learners Support Emotions are very important functions that affect students academic motivation, behavior, performance, health, and development of their personality. Research from 50s (Zeidner, 1998) investigated students anxiety and produced sufficient knowledge in order to support the educational practice. The impact of emotions during problem solving as well as during the participation in educational activities seems to be very important. More specifically, emotions can affect positively or negatively the learning process (Allen and Carifio, 1995). Efforts to study difficult subjects at deeper levels of comprehension involve a complex coordination of cognitive processes and affective states (DMello, 2012). In the academic context, the treatment focused on the problem seems to be the most appropriate adjustment. The emotion-oriented treatment may also be an adaptive solution. The following factors seem to be important to students motivation. These factors can be controlled by the teachers in order to stimulate positive emotions for the educational process: Teaching quality and motivation. Fa