Table of Contents:
Description: Frequency of codes from our interview data analysis. Read more about our case study design by clicking here.
The presence of flow is the inner psychological state to experience happiness when activities are involved.
Indicators of flow state as listed:
Pleasure
Challenges or tasks correspond to the right skills
Sense of control in the situation that there are no worries of failure
Perception of time is changed as time has passed faster
Experiencing clear-cut feedback and goals
Focused attention on what you are doing in present
Disappearance of self-consciousness to keep searching the deeper knowledge
Merged action and awareness that tasks keep doing without efforts
The presence of flow were found in this study when the following indicators appeared:
Pleasure (Frequency: 33)
Challenges or tasks correspond to the right skills (Frequency: 23 over 20)
Sense of control in the situation that students are no worries of failure and carry on their project (Frequency: 19)
Perception of time is changed as time has passed faster (Frequency: 11)
Experiencing clear-cut feedback (Frequency: 4) and goals (Frequency: 8)
Focused attention on what you are doing in present (Frequency: 4)
Disappearance of self-consciousness to keep searching the deeper knowledge (Frequency: 1)
We discovered in our interviews that autonomy of learning from PBL co-occures with the enjoyment and sense of control for the students.
Click to read more supporting evidence:
"Optimal experience and self-determination mentioned proactive human agency that students may instill a sense of motivation and encouraging. It foster a person to gain optimal learning experience in terms of sense of control, pleasure, free, and wish doing the activity. Students will score higher in those aspects with ‘‘I wanted to do it’’ learning experience which associated with high self-determination." (Bassi & Fave, 2012).
“A sense that one can control one’s actions; that is, a sense that one can in principle deal with the situation because one knows how to respond to whatever happens next” (Nakamura & Csikszentmihalyi, 2014).
One important aspect of flow is the balance between the challenge of the task and the skills one possess to over come the challenges. We found in our research that in group work situations the range of skills will increase thus making it easier for students to reach a balance between the challenge and their skills.
Click to read more supporting evidence:
"In group settings it is also reported to promote more enjoyment because of the conversation in co-active dissussions. The non-hierarchical group dynamic is intended to create a safe space for students to provide sustainable and positive constructive feedback among the group to evaluate own strengths and weaknesses on each challenge. In other words, skills could be acquired through the group processing in order to balance the level of challenge" (Murry & Lachowsky, 2021).
We found in our research that laissez-faire style of supervision paired with unclear instructions created less flow because students found it is difficult to focus their attention and get lost; periods of concentration were lowered due to uncertainties in regard to the direction of their project.
Click to read more supporting evidence:
"The supervisor should be an active thinker in relation to the project in general to assist student to make clear decisions. Under the dialogic learning, the role and style of the supervisor should be in highly engaged with fully participation, opposed to being detached. But then, laissez-faire supervision is not fulfilled the mentioned criteria and might let students lost in the learning process" (Ravn, 2017).
Concrete and clear feedback are important in fostering the flow state beacuse it will help provide clear-cut feedback and goals as a aspect of flow. Students find it helpful when the teacher provided them with exactly what they need to do. In the contracy when the feedback is too vauge students feel confused about the goal of their project and will have difficultues experienceing the flow state.
Click to read more supporting evidence:
"Without the clear goals with the verbal encouraging feedback from supervisors, striving for deep knowledge is inhibited internally, which is unfavorable for the positive effect on efforts and learning motivation. As a result, Goals of optimal practices cannot achieve and students cannot be in the flow state" (Phan & Ngu, 2022).
Individual inqury-based learning is another key learning process in PBL and it is the route for students to transfer the knowledge from the surface to the deep by forming focus question on the problem (Richard, 2015). It is important for supervisors to address an equal inquiry atmosphere and high involvement in the co-creative learning process with students (Rvan, 2014).
Our study has found there was weak association between student individual critical reflection and laissez-faire supervision. Students seldom mentioned how their teacher leads them to have critical reflection on literature in order to develop the solution processing. The only one stated: "sometimes went a little further to investigate where should go on this way or that way. So there was not specifically on that topic, we were reading a lot, we were discussing a lot".
It illustrates laissez-faire supervision style is unfavorable to provide systematic inquiry moments during student presentations and tutor-lead discussions. To ensure students to enter individual inquiry process, teachers should emphasis on the aim of reflective portfolios in each development stage and provide clear instructions and feedback regularly. Therefore, components of flow could be fostered.
Bassi, M., & Fave, A. D. (2012). Optimal experience and self-determination at school: joining perspectives. Motiv. Emot, 36, 425–438. doi: 10.1007/s11031-011-9268-z
Murry, J.,& Lachowsky, N.J. (2021). Group processing: Students reflections on the experience and impact of group processing. Journal of Problem Based Learning in Higher Education, 9(2), 1-21. https://doi.org/10.5278/ojs.jpblhe.v9i2.2883
Nakamura, J., & Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2014). Concept of flow. In M. Csikszentmihalyi (Ed), Flow and the foundations of positive psychology: The collected works of Michaly Csikszentmihalyi (pp.239-263). Springer Netherlands. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9088-8_16
Phan,H. P., & Ngu, B. H. (2022). Advancing the study of “Goals of Best Practice”: Toward achieving optimal best – Educational implications to developments in flow research and positive optimal psychology. Frontiers in Psychology, 13, 838560.
Ravn, O. (2017). Co-creation in PBL project work. In T. Chemi & L. Krogh (Eds), Co-creation in higher education : students and educators preparing creatively and collaboratively to the challenge of the future (pp. 67- 820. Sense Publishers.