Flow & PBL
A Case Study by Ting Fong Kwong and Cin Liu
Embedded Files
Introduction
Introduction
The qualitative research was conducted to examine which supervision style in Problem Base Learning (PBL) associates with experience of flow. This is a pilot research we sampled four students from University of Helsinki's Changing Education program. Four structured interviews were conducted to identify dimensions of flow in PBL and the findings were analyzed by thematic analysis.
Why we want to study this?
Why we want to study this?
The aim of this research is to provide insights of applying PBL in educational sciences' field to promote a better learning environment. According to Csikszentmihalyi (2014), humanities and social sciences students find it difficult to create flow state. It interprets teachers and students need to create more complicated challenges with the greater demonstration of skills in the learning process. As students in higher education ourselves, we have experienced PBL personally and saw the importance of good supervision in PBL. We hope this site can be a resource for teachers in higher education who hope to implement PBL in the future.
Read more about our case study design here:
Audio Clip #1 - Intro
Audio Clip #1 - Intro
Clip 1_1.mp3RESEARCH QUESTIONS:
"How different supervision style impact students' experience of flow?"
"Does group work mediate students' experience of flow?"
Key concepts
Key concepts
Flow
Flow
Flow state is indicated when students are highly focused on the learning tasks without realizing the timespan and place and as the result of higher the productivity of work or learning is constructed (Csikszentmihalyi, 2000; Doss, 2018). When students interact with the learning tasks, the level of challenges and skills should be changed throughout the learning process in order to motivate themselves into the flow state with he higher probability of success within the change of time by personal commitment, personal resolve, self- confidence (phan & Ngu, 2022).
According to the flow theory, the presence of flow is the inner psychological state to experience happiness when activities are involved. In his later work with other scholar, Nakamura & Csikszentmihalyi (2014) stated indicators of flow as listed:
Focused attention
clear-cut feedback and goals
Pleasure
Challenges or tasks correspond to the right skills (i.e. optimal exprience)
Merged action and awareness
Disappearance of self-consciousness
Sense of control
Perception of time is changed
Learning modes of PBL
Learning modes of PBL
Individual inqury-based learning: Include both action learning (i.e. literature reading) and critical reflection
Project-based learning in group: Include stimulated and authentic contexts (i.e. case-based learning and making solution products)
Discourse in supervision
PBL Supervision Style Infographics
PBL Supervision Style Infographics
What to Keep
What to Keep
The inclusive discussions with equal power between students and teachers is vital to engage good group dynamic. As teachers act as a faciliator rather than a marker, the group work in PBL is highly reflexive. Students are willing to share their ideas in group and motivate themselves to make a direction of the whole project development. In other words, autonomy of learning and pleasure, which assoicate with flow experience, are fostered within group work supported by teacher's guidance.
Audio Clip #2 - First Good Practice : Autonomy of Learning
Audio Clip #2 - First Good Practice : Autonomy of Learning
Clip 2_1.mp3STUDENT QUOTES:
"It is sort of like it was my project; I would like the feeling of agency. I felt that I participated, I take part in the whole process. I am not only the observer from outside "
“I really prefer to be the agent of my learning and going after that, doing things, and discovering things. This project was fun.”
"When you have a problem that's also very freely decided, then you have to have the freedom around the problem to try to solve it in all possible ways.”
Audio Clip #3 - Second Good practice: Group Work
Audio Clip #3 - Second Good practice: Group Work
Clip2_2.mp3"I found them[the group work] very very insightful, very educational to see other people's perspectives, and see how it shaped our product.”
“These made us learn especially new level of organisation because we had a lot of things to do, and we made sure everybody could participate in the same level."
"It is not cool/ nice when just one person gets to do what this person likes and the rest of us keep in the corner”
Tips:
Tips:
Be easy to engage with all students, group size up to 8 students
With a clear focus and points of discussion with students
Intense debates withe students upon scientific choices; let them make a decision among the group
What to Avoid
What to Avoid
There are 4 supervision styles in PBL and laissez-faire supervision style is not recommended. Even though laissez-faire supervision style allows freedom of choices with positive feedback, the high reflective inquiry process is neglected. The worst case is that students perceive their teacher is an outsider of the co-creative learning environment by just giving general suggestions and unclear instructions. Students under this supervision style are confused and frustrated because they do not know how to solve their formulated problem. As a result, the unbalance of challenges and acquired skills causes worry or anxiety in the model of flow state.
Audio Clip #4 - To avoid : Unclear Instructions with Laissez-faire Instruction Style
Audio Clip #4 - To avoid : Unclear Instructions with Laissez-faire Instruction Style
Clip3_2.mp3STUDENT QUOTES:
"Then sometime went into like finding the right file, and then you have to remember “why did I open this file?” and then you're like “okay these are the instructions, but for which week?” and then you go back. So, so many files maybe not in the clearest of ways?”... “and then everyone's focus is kind of being broken all the time ”
"I think the instructions were not super clear and a lot of times, I think a lot of us getting confused."
"I think yes (interpret to goal was clear) because the group made it clear but not because of supervisor.”
📢 Pro Tip for Teachers
📢 Pro Tip for Teachers
When implementing PBL make sure to make yourself available and accessible, make sure to let students know how to reach you.
What to Modify
What to Modify
In PBL, it is not suggested to be a "answer machine" even though teachers has considerable expertise in almost all cases. Therefore, teachers might not to give feedback in every detail. Both process supervision style and supportive laissez-faire supervision style are under this approach of supervision and sometimes, it is easy to confuse which supervision style you are conducting. The key element of distinguishing these two supervision styles is in what extent you present reflective feedback effectively.
Audio Clip #5 - To modify: Feedback
Audio Clip #5 - To modify: Feedback
Clip4_1.mp3STUDENT QUOTES:
“This is exactly what infuriated me... So in our product description we did describe our interviewees were all teacher, and we described how much time they have been a teacher. So the feedback itself is lacking, it reflects the lack of support that was provided to us.”
"Gave us feedback when we needed or asked for is spontaneously (...) she didn’t say a lots of things. Students gave more feedback than her. She only gave feedback spontaneously on final result in the portfolio."
📢 Pro Tips for Teachers
📢 Pro Tips for Teachers
Tip #1: To distinguish process supervision style and laissez-faire supervision style, try to respond to your students with questions rather than ambiguous comments (i.e. When the teacher is trying to give us space by giving an ambiguous comment, it confuses us more).
Tip #2: Because PBL in group work also values on peer-review, teachers should acquire the ability to summaries the peer feedback and give reflective questions as follow-up.
Sometimes students are lack of ability to process giving and receiving feedback quickly. Teachers can help them to illustrate what they are missing or confusing by asking questions
Help them reflect on the point so students have a clear view of their next steps during your feedback sessions
Eg: “Do you have related research?” ; "Why did you make this decision?"
How PBL Connects to Flow
How PBL Connects to Flow
The main purpose of our project was to investigate how PBL connects to flow. We have dedicated a sub-page for this topic. Please click on the button below:
Summary
Summary
To conclude, Problem Base Learning (PBL) can foster flow state of students in higher educaion, especailly in the group work project-based learning process. This student-driven pedagogy stresses on autonomy of learning with providing challenges throughout the process, and therefore it has the potential effectiveness to enhance learning motivation from apathy and boredom to flow under the following conditions:
Supervisors give reflective feedback with clear-cut instruction and direction, especially in the problem formulation stage, and so high level of challenges and acquired skills could be balanced
Supervisors are fully participated to show possibilities with reflective questions and encouragement for the project dvelopment
Group dynamic within the team and between supervisor should be non-hierarchical, in which everyone could bring their ideas and strengths with scientific justification or literature backup for further discussion and development
Future Development
Future Development
Researchers discovered "group work in PBL" (frequency of code: 25) and "group dynamic" (frequency of code: 29) could be the new research question and new idea of "group work and experience of flow" was aslo investigated in this study. For further studies, it is recommended to investigate how Problem Base Learning (PBL) can engage group processing with non-motivating group dynamics. For instance, ther future studies could be what supervisors can do if the group is unmotivated, or if groups have unfavorable dynamics.
Limitations
Limitations
This was a very small scale study with convenience sampling method and it was non-representative to the education field in higher eduation. Within the limit of time, only 2022-23 crochet was included in the study. For improvement, purposive sampling should be selected in different master programmes under the faculty education sciences or education so that the findings could be generalized into the population.
Since flow experience is highly related to subjectivity, the reliability of interview approach is constrained by "their reliance on retrospective reconstruction of past experience (Nakamura and Csikszentmihalyi, 2014, p. 247)". It is suggested the flow experience is measured under the whole learning process by filling questionnaires or writing learning diaries at the scheduled time spots.
References
References
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
Chemi, T., & Krogh, L. (2017). Co-creation in higher education : students and educators preparing creatively and collaboratively to the challenge of the future. Sense Publishers.
Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1990). Flow: The psychology of optimal experience. Harper Perennial.
Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1997). Finding flow. New York: Basic.
Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2014). Toward a psychology of optimal experience. In M. Csikszentmihalyi (Ed), Flow and the foundations of positive psychology: The collected works of Michaly Csikszentmihalyi (pp.209-226). Springer Netherlands. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9088-8_14
Doss, K.K. (2018). Providing opportunities for flow experiences and creative problem-solving through inquiry-based instruction. Global Education Review, 5(1). 108-122
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
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.
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.
Richards, C. (2015). Outcomes-based authentic learning, portfolio assessment, and a systems approach to “complex problem-solving”: Related pillars for enhancing the innovative role of PBL in future higher education. Journal of Problem Based Learning in Higher Education, 3(1), 79-95. https://doi.org/10.5278/ojs.jpblhe.v3i1.1204
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