Enhancing Mobile Learning: The Role of Flow Experience in Educational Engagement

1. To Flow and Not to Freeze: Applying Flow Experience to Mobile Learning- IEEE Transaction on Learning Technologies Vol.3 NO.1 2010 2012 / 03 / 23 Andy Wang

2. Outline Introduction Performance and Experience in Mobile Learning Method – Security Guard Training Result Conclusions and Discussion

3. Introduction • Benefits of using mobile devices for mobile e-learning? • Cheaper? Easy to use? • Outdoor classroom, a new way to learn? • The affordance of mobile devices? • The affordance of alternatives may achieve similar outcome in same situation. • What’ s the contribution of mobile devices? • Flow experience

4. Performance and Experience in Mobile Learning • Learning has been characterized in a number of ways. • Intrinsically internal and personal, involving the generation of new understanding and knowledge and active changes in conceptual understanding. • Self-control, find their own way to make a learning situation personalized and sensitized to them. • Learning as an active, social process, learner-center or collaborative interactions.

5. Performance and Experience in Mobile Learning (cont.) • new learning environment, outdoor collaborative learning • Mobile learning seems to cater for certain curricular areas. • Mostly measured learning performance using some quantitative metrics. • Nintendo DS console, an multimedia game-based English learning tool • Need to be interpreted together with individual cognitive differences • The best learning moments?

6. Performance and Experience in Mobile Learning (cont.) • Measuring learning experience • Less mobile learning project explicitly address how we can present learners with appropriate learning experience. • Flow: holistically controlled feeling where one acts with total involvement or engagement with particular activity, with a narrowing of focus of attention. • Self-controlis intrinsic to mobile learning, the relative levels of challenge and skill may either facilitate or block the motivation to learn. • It is a subjective experience, not easy to see.

7. Performance and Experience in Mobile Learning (cont.) • Four dimensions • The learner perceives a sense of controlover the learning activity • The learner perceives that his attention is focused on the learning activity • The learner’s curiosity is kept aroused during the learning activity • The learner finds the learning activity intrinsically interesting • Research here focus on flow experience and whether or not it would be a useful construct for characterizing and measuring the subjective mobile learning experience.

8. Performance and Experience in Mobile Learning (cont.) • Performance, Spatial Cognition, and Flow – Experiment Tasks • Mobility determines the usefulness of mobile learning • However, navigation through a physical world is a task that consumes the majority if a person’s attention resources. • Some studies: • high-spatial individual is good at constructing a model of the organization and structure of embedded learning content • Low-spatial individual is more directed to semantic content

9. Performance and Experience in Mobile Learning (cont.) • Pilot Study • Spatial ability should be regard as an independent variable or not? How it could be associated with the dependent variables? • Using the same task and mobile learning material. • Some potential variable that may interact with performance were not fully controlled. • Separate individuals into two group with different Spatial ability.

10. Performance and Experience in Mobile Learning (cont.) • Though there is some different, almost all participants are pleasure in the test. • Flow experience v.s Cognitive capability?

11. Method – Security Guard Training • Three group • Traditional map-based instruction, control group • Game-based system, assumed to have the best performance. • Mobile learning system

12. Method – Security Guard Training (cont.) • Participants • 53 subjects, 19~26 years, half of them are female(25/53) • Participants are assigned in a random way • Only 9 subjects are in the control group, in order to show the power of experiment group. • Experimental Design • Mobile-based and paper-based group are not sitting at a desk • Game-based learning group are not allowed to physically visit the rooms, so that some environment cues might not be memorized. • The dependent variables used the rating on 12 questions regarding the flow experience.

13. Method – Security Guard Training (cont.) • Procedure • First provided with instructions regarding the experiment. • All the participants are first time to take block rotation test. • According to the score of test, participants are separated into two group. • Learning session, including 23 rooms, guidance from learning system, and some security information. • Write down the five rooms, security codes, other norms regarding security rules, and their names on the map. • 12 questions relating to flow experience were rated on a five-point Likert scale.

14. Method – Security Guard Training (cont.)

15. Result

16. Result (cont.)

17. Result (cont.)

18. Result (cont.) • Individual difference in spatial cognition should be considered as an important factor when assessing the performance benefits of mobile learning. • Game-based learning performs not so well. • Contrary to the two performance measures above, the ratings of flow experience revealed a rather different pattern. • Mobile learning and game-based learning is better.

19. Result (cont.) Learning control Attention focus Cognitive curiosity Intrinsic interests

20. Conclusions and Discussion • Traditional way v.sNew way (mobile or game) • Flow experience is a better way to measure mobile learning. • Analyzing user experience before learning outcomes are applied. • Mobile learning seems to be encourage people to have more cognitive curiosity and intrinsic interest.

21. Conclusions and Discussion (cont.) • Knowledge acquisition and situated learning • The type of the task, Security Guard could acquire knowledge through constructing and internalizing their own cognitive structures through the learning activities. • Building up knowledge by active participation, directly gained by through participating in a social process, and learning is displayed by becoming more central in these process. • Mobile learning should be seen as situated within both physical and psychosocial context and distributed between a person and the tools he is using.

22. Conclusions and Discussion (cont.) • Limitation • Do not have any direct evidence from real-world mobile learning applications that our accounts are practically applicable. • How the flow experience will scale up to handle real instruction designs. • Further Research • Different class may not have the same result. • Need to explore other individual differences • Pursue a longitudinal study

23. Thanks for Your Attention