Thinking Groups and the Development of Affective Problem-solving competencies within Online Learning Environments at University Level

In this paper we present the first findings of an online problem-solving experience for undergraduate students, attending a topology course within Bache-lor of Mathematics, aiming to promote the construction of problem-solving com-petencies by using cognitive roles within thinking groups, with a magnifying lens on the affective level. The key idea of personifying cognitive functions by cogni-tive roles in a problem-solving process represents the engine of an ongoing re-search on the construction of problem-solving undergraduate student’s compe-tencies, begun with an analysis of some metacognitive aspects that students expe-rienced by playing the roles. Each individual role corresponds to a cognitive func-tion coming into play when a mathematician faces a problem. Each collective role corresponds to a problem-solving thinking process performed by a thinking group. To shed the light on student’s emotional outcomes and on the impact of the use of online learning environments on student’s affective dimension, we fo-cus our qualitative analysis on student’s emotional experience both with respect to the structured problem-solving activities and the digital tools, coming out from some protocols, to understand if and how they foster conditions for developing emotional competencies according to Goldin’s idea of affective competencies.