Toyota Unveils High-tech Car Ahead of Show by associatedpress I was waiting at the help desk and in order to answer my questions, the receptionist was requesting information through the computer. The lady behind the desk was frustrated and said, “common, wake up computer!” Feeling frustrated towards our computers may not be too uncommon and some researchers, like Surakka and Vanhala, suggested that our frustrated respond to a computer is similar to how we would response to another human being. They asserted that humans are born to interact with others and this inclination of social interaction causes humans to respond to inanimate objects in an emotional way. Toyota recently had a press conference in which they talked about their idea of future cars and the CEO said, “ a car must appeal to the emotion of its owner.” In other words, it is important for the car designer to design cars that can respond to its owner’s emotions.

Similarly, Surakka and Vanhala believed that it is important for instructional designers to design online education programs that will respond to students’ emotional feelings during the learning. For example, a virtual agent may be used to react to students’ emotions (i.e. discouragement) by providing constructive feedback (i.e. saying something like “I can see how hard you are trying. You are so close of getting it done!). Therefore, it may be important for instructional designer to consider designing feedbacks to facilitate students’ online learning through regulating their emotions. What do you think?