Immersion and Flow

I recently spoke at the ‘Immersion’ Keyword Seminar held by QUT’s Children and Youth Research Centre.  Seminar convenor and Transformation Teaching Fellow, Dr Peta Wyeth, invited me to consider immersion in relation to the Transform agenda and how digital technology creates meaningful and absorbing personalised online learning experiences.

The idea of learning immersion is founded in Csikszentmihalyi’s concept of ‘flow’ (1990). His 8 dimensions of the flow experience are: clear goals and immediate feedback; equilibrium between the level of challenge and personal skill; merging of action and awareness; focused concentration; sense of potential control; loss of self-consciousness; time distortion, and self-rewarding experience.

During the last decade, many studies have considered ‘flow’ in online learning, with most endorsing its positive effects. For example, a study of 525 students in 23 different online courses at Seoul’s Dongguk University (Shin 2006) found that ‘flow is a strong predictor of student satisfaction with online learning’, with student perceptions of skill and challenge influencing their level of flow (p.719)

Some educators point to the challenge of providing evidence of flow in online social and collaborative learning.  In this environment, is flow also aligned to ‘engagement’?  Research in Networked Flow: Towards an Understanding of Creative Networks (Gaggioli et al, 2012) identifies ‘social presence’ as a key element in building and sustaining ‘networked flow’.

This has clear implications for designing and organising online social and collaborative learning experiences.

As we move forward with Transform, our faculty fellows are developing principles and approaches to ensure the experiences we offer are based on an authentic understanding of personalised, small-bite encounters with learning, as well as learners’ more expansive social and collaborative experience in networked, online communities of inquiry. It’s an exciting time to be working at QUT as we chart our path towards real future learning.

References

Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1990). Flow: The psychology of optimal experience. New York, NY: HarperPerennial.

Gaggioli, A., Riva, G., Milani, L. & Mazzoni, E. (2012). Networked Flow: Towards an       understanding of creative networks [EBL version]. Retrieved from http://www.qut.eblib.com.au.ezp01.library.qut.edu.au/EBLWeb/patron/

Shin, N. (2006). Online learners’ ‘flow’ experience: an empirical study. British Journal of Educational Technology, 37, 705-720. doi:  10.1111/j.1467-8535.2006.00641.x

Sheona Thomson
Associate Director, Learning and Teaching Transformation