One of the main problems of today's high school students is their under achievement due to boredom or disengagement from learning process. So, how do we engage and motivate our students to maximise the learning experience?
Flow occurs when there is a balance between challenge and skills. However, this balance is easily disrupted resulting in either anxiety (high challenge, low skills) or boredom (low challenge, high skills).
The concept of Flow (Csickszentmihalyi, 1990):
The effect of flow on game performance and learning outcomes was studied on secondary school students using a computer game about medieval Amsterdam called “Frequency 1550” (Admiraal, 2011). The study showed that students were deeply engaged with the game, but sometimes were distracted by solving problems related to technology and navigation. The main effect of flow was shown to increase game performance but not necessarily their learning outcome (as measured against level of knowledge of medieval Amsterdam). Learning outcomes were influenced by distractive activities and team competition: when students were less distracted, they were more engaged with group competition and therefore increased their learning outcome.
The implication for using educational computer games is that the concept of flow is directly related to increased motivation and concentration but its effect on learning outcome depends on the level of distraction and involvement in group competition . However, the experience of flow being enjoyable, it is likely to be repeated and this concept by itself is worth being explored in terms of increasing motivation and engagement in education.
Reference:
Admiraal, W. Huizenga, J, Akkerman, S. ten Dam, G. (2011) The concept of flow in collaborative game-based learning. Computer in Human Behavior 27 pp 1185-1194.
Csickszentmihalyi, M. (1990) Flow: The psychology of optimal experience. New York: Harper-Perennial.
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