FLOW EXPERIENCES IN EVERYDAY CLASSES OF SPANISH COLLEGE STUDENTS : THE FIT BETWEEN CHALLENGE AND SKILL

This study is concerned with the fow state as a high intrinsic motvaton experience. Following Csikszentmihalyi's theoretcal model (1990), we analyze in which contents within the social psychology subject, students experience more fow. Partcipants were Spanish college students from a general course on Social Psychology. They completed a diary study during 12 master classes through the academic semester. The results showed that students experienced diferent states of consciousness in diferent sessions: relaxaton, apathy, fow and anxiety, respectvely. These fndings provide new insight into the relatonship between an academic subject and students, facilitatng the creaton of new and innovatve strategies for learning. The ultmate goal is to modify and improve the dynamics and learning actvites for the teaching course, increasing the experience of fow in class (and reducing the levels of anxiety, apathy or relaxaton).


INTRODUCTION
During the university period, learning encompasses an important living space, where academic success and subjectve well-being is pursued by students and teachers.However, it is known that not all students are performing well and enjoy the learning actvites in which they engage.In any university classroom, students may be unmotvated and uncommited with the dynamic actvites taking place in the classroom.Therefore, to promote motvaton and enjoyment in the teaching and learning processes has generated considerable interest in recent years.One of the most acclaimed psychological constructs by the positve psychology movement is "fow" (or optmal experiences), term advocated by Csikszentmihalyi (1990).This concept refers to the state of consciousness when a person is completely absorbed in an actvity for its own pleasure and enjoyment, during which tme fies, and actons, thoughts and movements succeed each other without pause (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990).This author pointed out that the main problem is that students do not want to get involved in the actvites and learning, and therefore, universites end up with an emotonal or motvatonal problem rather than a cognitve or intellectual problem.Specifcally, we pretend to assess the level of fow, as well as other states of consciousness previously examined by Csikszentmihalyi (1990), such as anxiety, apathy or relaxaton experienced by university students during each course theme in an entre semester.The aim is to fnd out which aspects of social psychology facilitate the experience of diferent states of consciousness, in order to modify and improve the dynamics and learning actvites.

The balance between challenges and perceived skills in college students
One of the most important characteristcs of fow is the emphasis given to the balance between the challenge of a given actvity and the skill of the person on that task (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990).If the challenge in an educatonal actvity exceeds the student's skill level, anxiety is likely to emerge, and discouragement increases the likelihood of not reaching the required learning level.If the actvity does not challenge the students' skills, then relaxaton may appear, resultng in the same consequences as in the previous example.If skills and challenge are both low in an educatonal actvity, apathy can take place.Finally, students can experience fow when their skills and the challenges they face are high and in balance (Nakamura & Csikszentmihalyi, 2002) (see Figure 1).And it is in the state of fow during the processes of teaching and learning that students can learn more and with more interest.The theory of fow is inherently related to learning (Shernof & Csikszentmihalyi, 2009).In fact, fow theory has suggested that it is possible to enjoy and learn something relevant at the same tme.

The consequences of experiencing fow in educatonal setngs
As background to optmal experiences, research has found that proposing challenging tasks (i.e., solving complex problems, express high levels of creatvity) to students facilitate fow experiences, which is important to most college students, but especially to people with high level of skill (Scager, Akkerman, Pilot & Wubbels, 2012).On the other hand, studies on the consequences of fow have found a positve relatonship between this peak experience and good humor, psychological well-being, interest in the task, and high performance (Steele & Fullagar, 2009).Some research has suggested positve states like welfare, can produce fow, increase atenton, cognitve and behavioral skills, enhance intellectual and social resources, and facilitate learning and academic performance (Fredrickson & Branigan, 2005).The link between learning actvites and fow has short-term consequences in terms of intrinsic gratfcaton.But it can also have long term consequences by promotng greater perseverance and efort refected in the tme spent studying, a focus on challenging and ambitous learning objectves, and a desire to pursue high academic standards.
Despite the positve associaton between fow and academic performance and the considerable number of investgatons in academic contexts, the concept of fow has been poorly studied in relaton to the discipline of social psychology, especially in specifc cultural contexts such as Spain.Therefore, the present study is one of the frst studies interested examining fow experiences during the teaching-learning process of a social psychology course.

METHODOLOGY 2.1 Partcipants
Fify college students from the Faculty of Psychology at the University of Barcelona (Spain) were recruited for this study.Sixty per cent of the sample was female and most partcipants were aged between 18 and 19 at the beginning of the study.All of the partcipants agreed voluntarily to be part of the contnuous assessment in the subject of Social Psychology, a basic training course with a total of 6 credits ofered in the second semester of the frst year of the bachelor program.

Procedure
The present research study has been developed using longitudinal repeated measures.Specifcally, we used the experience sampling method (Hektner, Schmidt & Csikszentmihalyi, 2007), a method that has been described as a powerful educatonal tool when linked to other variables (i.e., academic performance).More than providing informaton about how students spend tme in class, this method allows students to understand how they feel during the sessions and the course.
At the end of the 12 master classes during the whole semester, a brief questonnaire was administered to gather informaton about • the most relevant informaton for students regarding that specifc teaching session, and • the perceived challenges and skills.Each partcipant answered the questonnaire twelve tmes, so the data obtained represented a total of 600 data points (50 x 12) throughout the course.Formatve assessment actvites (i.e., multple choice exams), independent work sessions and tutorials were leaved aside.
The topics for each of the 12 sessions were, based on the Spanish translaton of the Handbook "Social Psychology" (Baron & Byrne, 2005): • non-verbal communicaton; • atributons of causality, both from the Social Percepton theme; • mental frames; • potental sources of error in the social cogniton, both from the Social Cogniton theme; • the formaton of attudes; • attudes change, both from the Attudes theme; • the power of the situaton; • acceptance or condescension techniques, both from the Social Infuence theme; • factors that infuence atracton and • psychosocial explanatons of atracton, both from the Interpersonal Atracton theme; and • romantc relatonships; • the triangular love model, both from the Intmate Relatonships theme.

Instrument
The fow diary contained three questons covering the three aspects under examinaton: Actvity, perceived challenge and skill level.The variables "level of challenge" and "level of skills" were chosen because of their key role as ''fow conditons'', this is, when perceived challenges and skills are in balance and they are high (Stein, Kimiecik, Daniels & Jackson, 1995) (see Figure 2).

The diferent mental states at the Social Psychology course
First, the 600 data points were analyzed together in order to discern the percentage of the four diferent states within the social psychology course: fow, anxiety, apathy and relaxaton.The data revealed that most students spent most of the tme in situatons of relaxaton or apathy (30% and 30%, approximately) (i.e., the class situaton challenged them slightly).The majority of the tme the students had low skills (apathy) or high skills (relaxaton) to face such challenges.In contrast, about 20% of students felt in fow during the various sessions of the course (i.e., they felt there was a great challenge and in turn that their skills were also high to handle it).Finally, just over 10% of students felt anxious (meaning that their capabilites were overwhelmed by the challenge that involved the class actvity).Afer analyzing the students´ experiences in the 12 sessions of the social psychology course, we will analyze the diferent sessions individually.

The diferent states within each individual session
From the 12 master classes, the three sessions with higher levels of fow were Sessions 3, 7 and 8.The sessions with higher levels of anxiety were 5, 9 and 10.The sessions with higher levels of apathy were 1, 4 and 12. Finally, the sessions with higher levels of relaxaton were 2, 6 and 11 (See Table 1).

Experiencing fow in the classroom
During session 7, three classic experiments in Social Psychology that are probably the best known psychology experiments ever undertaken, were extensively explained and discussed with student partcipants: • Solomon Asch's conformity to majority experiment investgated the extent to which social pressure from a majority group could afect a person to conform (Asch, 1951).
During session 8, the six principles for convincing others to say "yes" (reciprocity, commitment, social proof, liking, authority and scarcity), were extensively explained and discussed with student partcipants: Robert Cialdini's Six Principles of Infuence (Cialdini, 1984).When analyzing these two sessions, we can see that both form part of the Social Infuence topic within Social Psychology.

Experiencing anxiety in the classroom
During sessions 9 and 10 we focused on the antecedents and theoretcal explanatons of interpersonal atracton.Both issues form part of the Interpersonal Atracton topic within Social Psychology.During these two sessions, several theoretcal perspectves were analysed, such as • Donn Byrne´s reinforcement-afect model of atracton (Byrne, 1992); • Robert Zajonc´ mere-exposure efect (Zajonc, 1968) or • Theodore Newcomb´ similarity hypothesis (Newcomb, 1956).

Experiencing apathy and relaxaton in the classroom
Finally, within the diferent topics, apathy and relaxaton were mostly combined.For instance, in the topics of social percepton (sessions 1 and 2) or intmate relatonships (sessions 11 and 12) these states equally appeared.In relaton to Csikszentmihalyi´s fow model seen in Figure 1, these two states are related to low levels of challenge, although with diferent level of skills (when high, relaxaton, when low, apathy).Specifcally for the state of relaxaton (sessions focused on atributons, attude change and romantc relatonships) the students perceived that those contents were easy and atainable with their present level.And in the case of the state of apathy (sessions focused on non-verbal communicaton, sources of error in social cogniton and the love models) the students perceived that those contents were easy but not atainable with their present level.

DISCUSSION
The results revealed that students in the subject of Social Psychology experienced diferent states of relaxaton, apathy, fow or anxiety during diferent master class sessions.During the course, about one ffh of the partcipants have experienced the fow experience during the sessions.It is relevant since it is known that it promotes intrinsic motvaton, and therefore enhancing it during the learning process is a key factor to improving the quality of learning (Nakamura & Csikszentmihalyi, 2002).
Since several teaching tools were used in order to introduce and discuss the themes during the semester, we retrospectvely checked the teaching tools used in the diferent sessions related to the four diferent states (see right column from Table 1).Regarding the sessions with higher levels of fow, original videos of the experiments, scientfc publicatons (for instance, where similar experiments have been conducted; Burger, 2009), as well as extra material (i.e., internet material) were used.
In line with most scientfc research, the experiences of relaxaton and apathy afected almost two-thirds of the college's students (Shernof & Csikszentmihalyi, 2009).A vast majority of partcipants experienced low levels of challenge with varying degrees of skill.Perhaps due to empathy with their students, teachers have been able to generate learning situatons too simple or too predictable, parceling and structuring them at the highest degree, which, from the perspectve of positve psychology, it would seem counterproductve to generate greater psychological well-being, and a greater interest in the task and a higher performance (Steele & Fullagar, 2009).Specifcally, regarding the sessions with higher level of relaxaton, the diferent topics approached there were explained and discussed with student partcipants, mainly with the use of extensive and self-explanatory power points (mainly only based on the text-book) and images.And regarding the sessions with higher level of apathy, the power points used were more introductory and not very detailed.
Finally, a relatvely low number of students sufered from anxiety during the learning process, which may have hindered their learning.Thus, an excessive percepton of complexity or difculty could discourage and negatvely afect their self-esteem and motvaton to contnue learning.Although scientfc publicatons were utlized together with the power point presentatons, no other teaching tools were used.
To sum up, it could be the case that "how" the master classes were enriched (only power point presentatons versus adding videos, scientfc artcles, images, etc.) is related to the diferent states of consciousness of college students.For instance, it seemed that a combinaton of a challenging task and high skills regarding social topics of highly emotonal relevance and proximity was translated in high levels of fow.Moreover, "when" the master classes take place can also be related to diferent mental states.It could explain why the frst and fnal (1 and 12, respectvely) master classes were related to the mental state of apathy due to the inverted "u" of every learning process.

Future research
Future studies are necessary in order to go beyond the present results and to shed more light into the diferent factors that alone, or in combinaton with contents of the subject, can facilitate higher levels of fow experiences, while reducing the levels of relaxaton, apathy and anxiety.In that sense, analyzing and learning from these thematc sessions in which more experiences of fow occurred, should help in designing methods to enhance student's experience in other sessions in which the balance between challenge and skill is lower (apathy), or when there exists too much challenge (anxiety) or too much perceived skills (relaxaton).
Teachers play a key role in providing complex educatonal challenges that are tailored to the abilites of their students (Bassi, Steca, Delle Fave & Caprara, 2007).Regarding future research in social psychology, there are some aspects that in our view should be studied: • The relatonship of "fow-academic performance" in diferent and larger samples, as well as the possible "contagion" of fow between teachers and students.
• The explanatory factors of optmal experiences based on the type of teaching actvites (besides the ones used in the present study "master class", other types, such as case resoluton and exercises, etc.).
Measuring quanttatve diferences between "fow-themes" and "fow-teaching actvites" could allow the formulaton of hypotheses concerning the antecedent variables that are inherent (or not) to the course contents, allowing for the comparison of each part.
• Complementng the above points, the form of study and measurement of "fow", in additon to expressing the relatonship between the student profle and the profle of the contents, could also contribute to the understanding of the teachers´ skills (Escartn, Ferrer, Pallàs & Ruiz, 2008).For example, it may be the case that topics usually considered as "theoretcal" generate high levels of fow, and conversely, some practces and case studies generate lower levels of fow but apathy, relaxaton or anxiety.This could manifest the high level of skills of the teacher to achieve a balance between challenge and skill in his master classes; or a low ability of the teacher to fnd such balance by sharing case studies and practcal exercises.

CONCLUSION
This is one of the frst studies that have focused on the diferent states of consciousness of Spanish college´s students regarding the contents of their Social Psychology course within the Bachelors degree in Psychology.It represents a frst step in order to understand the impact of these contents on students´ perceptons regarding the challenges of each topic and the skills they have to handle them.From a practcal point of view, this study has implicatons for educaton that can contribute positvely to the motvaton and enjoyment of students during the learning process.From this point forward, the possibilites to enhance, modify, or reduce the course materials and the teaching tools are enormous.This study ofers insight into how some master classes facilitates the state of fow, and therefore, many lessons can be learned.Similarly, this research also facilitates the comprehension regarding which master classes can lead students to states of anxiety (high challenge, low skills), relaxaton (low challenge, high skills) or apathy (low challenge, low skills).Several changes can be adopted

Table 1 .
Sessions with the major indexes of relaxaton, apathy, anxiety and fow