Do Students Experience Flow Conditions Online?

Abstract

This pilot study asked graduate students enrolled in higher education programs at two institutions to ascertain whether and to what extent they experienced nine flow-related conditions in two settings: (1) online courses or (2) surfing or gaming online. In both settings, flow was experienced "sometimes," although no significant difference in mean frequency was found between the two settings. When asked for examples of flow, however, students gave more examples drawn from non-class-related activities (n = 35)-such as researching topics related to health, travel, or shopping, or engaging with Facebook-than class-related activities (n = 3). Finally, students found that online class experiences "frequently" impacted their satisfaction with the course, and three flow conditions were found to be correlated with course satisfaction at p ≤ 0.05: clear goals, concentration and focus, and a sense of personal control over activity.

The Role of an Interactive Visual Learning Tool and Its Personalizability in Online Learning: Flow Experience

“…The current study responds to this call and investigates human-computer interaction effects on online learning. Also, interactivity and flow effects on learning from previous literature have been inconsistent, particularly in the context of internet-based learning environment (Meyer & Jones, 2013). Such inconclusive findings may be due to the fact that the majority of studies adopted selfreported surveys of learning experience (e.g., Chou, Peng, Chang, 2010;Etemad-Sajadi, 2016;Wei et al, 2015) that are prone to response biases, such as social desirability, memory biases, and an inability to detect causal relationships.…”

The role of e-engagement and flow on the continuance with a learning management system in a blended learning environment

“…Operationalisations of the flow construct range from a simple first-order construct to a second-order construct. For instance, the study by Meyer and Jones (2013) adopted a single dimension 7-item scale to ascertain that concentration and focus, sense of control and a clear goal were correlated with course satisfaction in online courses. Guo et al (2016), however, adopted a second order 4-dimension scale to show that telepresence, immersive experience and enjoyment are related to flow and generate a chain of positive outcomes when applied in an integrated flow framework model.…”

A Scoping Review of Flow Research

“…Flow is always investigated during a certain activity in a certain context, and their variety in the identified studies is large: (a) work- or study-related activities such as work, learning ( Peterson and Miller, 2004 ; Rathunde and Csikszentmihalyi, 2005 ; Wright et al, 2007 ; Ceja and Navarro, 2011 ; Stephanou, 2011 ; Demerouti et al, 2012 ; Ryu and Parsons, 2012 ; Debus et al, 2014 ; Escartin Solanelles et al, 2014 ; Hernandez et al, 2014 ), and teaching ( Coleman, 2014 ), (b) leisure ( Rodríguez-Sánchez et al, 2011b ), (c) professional dancing ( Hefferon and Ollis, 2006 ; Panebianco-Warrens, 2014 ), (d) music festivals ( Jonson et al, 2015 ), (e) creative activities such as designing clothes ( Min et al, 2015 ) and visiting arts courses or making art ( Reynolds and Prior, 2006 ; Bass, 2007 ; Jones, 2013 ; van der Hoorn, 2015 ), (f) gaming (e.g., Ivory and Magee, 2009 ; Thin et al, 2011 ; Bressler and Bodzin, 2013 , 2016 ) and several online activities (e.g., Guo and Poole, 2009 ; Faiola et al, 2013 ; Hsu et al, 2013 ; Meyer and Jones, 2013 ; Wang et al, 2015 ), (g) research activities ( Hudock, 2015 ; Zha et al, 2015 ) and information technology use ( Pilke, 2004 ), (h) sports (e.g., Koehn and Morris, 2014 ; Deol and Singh, 2016 ; training vs. competition; Swann et al, 2012 , 2015a ), (i) translation activities ( Mirlohi et al, 2011 ), (j) psychological rehabilitation activities (e.g., Bassi et al, 2012 ; Nissen-Lie et al, 2015 ), (k) extreme contexts such as rituals ( Lee, 2013 ) and extreme weather during climbing ( Bassi and Delle Fave, 2010 ) and even (l) first-aid activities, whereby professionals experienced more flow than volunteers ( Sartori and Delle Fave, 2014 ). This large list shows that flow can occur in a large variety of activities and contexts ( Diaz and Silveira, 2013 ).…”