Learning as a Shared Peak Experience: Interactive Flow in Higher Education

Abstract

Student engagement is an important determinant of both academic achievement and subjective well-being. Crucially, engagement has been linked to individuallevel flow, a psychological state characterized by intense enjoyment and complete absorption in an activity. Building on existing concepts, we propose an extension of the flow concept to the group level and argue that teaching is most effective when students working together enter a state of Bshared interactive flow^where they communicate effortlessly and facilitate each other's thought processes. Both causes and effects of interactive flow were investigated in a field study based on a newly developed questionnaire. Students from six different undergraduate psychology courses were measured three times during one semester, yielding 341 observations. The experience of interactive flow was highly correlated with interest in course contents, perceived group competence, the amount of own and group verbal contributions, satisfaction and learning success. Differences in measures acquired before and after classes point to the existence of two virtuous circles: group competence and interest facilitate the occurrence of interactive flow which in turn leads to increasing interest and perceptions of higher group competence. In practical terms, this suggests that teachers can make use of these feedback loops by instilling group-level efficacy beliefs in their students and ensuring that the initial topics of a classroom session are particularly captivating.

Psychological Capital and Career Outcomes among Final Year University Students: the Mediating Role of Career Engagement and Perceived Employability

“…Engaged students are likely to engage in behaviors and activities that enhance their employability, for example by undertaking skills enhancement training. Moreover, engaged students are likely to be more active during learning processes consequently enhancing learning interest and competence (Raettig 2018). However, our results support the idea of focusing on specific aspects of PE; particularly along the internal and external facets (Rothwell et al 2008;Rothwell and Arnold 2007).…”

Perspectives on group flow: Existing theoretical approaches and the development of the integrative group flow theory.

“…In terms of designation, we recommend a consistent use of the term group flow. This term was established in the past (Sawyer, 2003), was built into a taxonomy (Raettig & Weger, 2018), and was supported by other authors (e.g., Pels et al, 2018). Despite this, van den Hout et al ( 2018) explicitly argue that the term team flow differs from group flow because-according to their view-a team, unlike a group, is characterized by specific flow-relevant features (e.g., common purpose, goals).…”

“…Two kinds of group flow can occur: either (a) group flow while accomplishing an individual task in the presence of others, which is social individual flow according to the taxonomy by Raettig and Weger (2018), or (b) group flow while accomplishing a task together with others which corresponds to the term group flow in the narrower sense (cf. Raettig & Weger, 2018). It is assumed that group identity and a high challenge of the group task positively influence both kinds of This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.…”

Students can experience flow from problem-based learning in Conservation Genetics

“…Flow theory is universal and inherently related to learning (Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, 1997;Shernoff & Csikszentmihalyi, 2009). In the context of flow in education, most published studies agree that students experiencing flow are likely to become engaged in learning and motivated (Ellwood & Abrams, 2018;Raettig & Weger, 2018;Schworm & Holzer, 2018). Despite extensive research in flow, only one study has published on problem-based learning linked to flow experience (Barrett, 2010).…”