Individual and group-level factors for students' emotion management in online collaborative groupwork

• We examine multilevel models of emotion management (EM) in online groupwork.
• The participants were 298 graduate students (86 groups) in the Southeast of U.S.
• EM was positively related to help seeking at the student and group level.
• EM was positively related to feedback at the student level.

The current study examines empirical models of students' emotion management in online collaborative groupwork. Student- and group-level predictors of emotion management in groupwork were analyzed in a survey of 298 graduate students from 86 online study groups in the Southeast of U.S. Results from the multilevel analyses revealed that most of the variance in emotion management occurred at the student level, with help seeking and learning-oriented reasons being the two significant predictors at the group level. Results further revealed that emotion management in groupwork was positively related to feedback, learning-oriented reasons, arranging the environment, monitoring motivation, and help seeking. In addition, compared with part-time students, full-time students were more likely to take initiative in managing their emotion while doing online groupwork.