Browsing by Subject "flow"

The aim of this study was to analyze the flow experiences of craft and art professionals and how these experiences are linked to happiness. Flow experience was defined by the typical flow characteristics determined by Csikszentmihalyi. The flow experiences were analyzed through the various stages of the creative design and manufacturing processes. It was assumed that creative work offers diverse opportunities for the emergence of flow experiences. This study also examined the impact of the community and environment of Fiskars on the flow experiences. Ten craft and art professionals who work in Fiskars were interviewed for the study. The method of research was content analysis. The data associated with the main research question was analyzed with theoretical connections to flow theory. The analysis of the other research questions was conducted on the basis of the data. In practice, themes relevant to the study were derived from the data. The flow experiences of craft and art professionals occur on the design and manufacturing stages of the creative process. The difference between these was what created the flow experience: the challenging problem solution or the smooth routine. The flow experience in the creative process usually occurs when control is achieved. Concentration appeared to be the key feature of the flow experiences. The environment in Fiskars enabled the essential features of the flow experience, such as concentration. The association of creative people was seen as inspiring. Self-realization and the possibility of self-relevant work brought happiness to the lives of artisans and art professionals. Flow was attached to the broader happiness, as well as to moments of success. In terms of happiness the whole creative process was more crucial than a single flow experience. The strong intrinsic motivation led artisan and art professionals to implement personal ideas and thoughts in their work. The autonomy of the individual appears to be essential for achieving flow and happiness.

Tässä kvalitatiivisessa pro gradu -tutkielmassa tutkin luovuuden tukemisen merkityksiä. Tutkimus sisältää kolme narratiivista haastattelua ja niistä syntyneet kertomukset luovuuden tukemisen merkityksistä. Toinen tutkimuksessa käytetty metodi on systemoitu kirjallisuuskatsaus, jossa tärkeimmiksi teorioiksi on valittu J. P. Guilfordin divergentti ajattelu, A. H. Maslow’n teoria luovuudesta itsensä toteuttamisena ja M. Csíkszentmihályin flow-teoria. Luovuuden tukemisen merkityksiä voidaan löytää niin yksilön kuin yhteiskunnan näkökulmista. Tämän tutkimuksen parasta antia ovat luovuuskertomukset, joita analysoin muun muassa rohkeuden, vapauden, ideoinnin ja itsevarmuuden rakentumisen näkökulmista. Yhteiskunnallisia näkökulmia tutkimukselle on luovien produktien tuottaminen ja yhteiskunnallinen osallistuminen.

Tutkin luovuuden tunnistamisen ja tukemisen keinoja koulukontekstissa. Tutkimuksen aihe on valittu tunnistamalla yhteiskunnalle tärkeä ilmiö sekä tarve tukea kasvavien yksilöiden identiteetin kehittymistä. Toteutan tutkimuksen kirjallisuuskatsauksena. Tutkielmassani tärkeä teema on luovuuden määritteleminen, ei pelkästään lahjakkuuden, vaan suomalaisen peruskoulun näkökulmasta. Tutkimuksestani voi tehdä johtopäätöksiä luovuuden ja luovien alojen tärkeydestä yhteiskunnalle sekä opettajan kasvavista vaatimuksista luovuuden edistämisessä.

Objectives. In this research it is described how motivational factors are emphasized as go in for knitting. Motivation has been under investigation for a long time and a lot of theories have arisen. Motivation is intrinsic (originating from individual) or extrinsic (originating as consequence of external rewards and punishments) motivation. Motivation serves as the source of energy and steers the activity. The intensity, permanence and selection of tasks of motivated activity lead to sterling execution. The perspectives of motivation theories can accentuate either mechanistic (passive individual) or organismic (active individual) approaches. The action of individual can be task- or ego-oriented. In task-oriented activity it is pivotal to learn new issues and advance. Still, the division can be executed another way by distinguishing occasion motivation and general motivation of which the latter is more enduring. In the background of individual`s motives and motivation the basic needs and emotions are impacting. Autonomy, relatedness and competence constitute the three basic psychic needs. In self-determination theory the extrinsic motivation can turn into intrinsic motivation. The basic emotions appear in three different way: as physiological changes, readinesses of action and subjective experiences – emotions move individual and his/her ability to regulate them is central for well-being. The character of interest is situation bounded or personal interest. The challenges of learning can undermine motivation and flow experiences can fortify it. As going in for increases it means that one pledges to activity and puts more effort into it. Doing by oneself and especially handcrafts have long traditions in Finland and furthermore they still have significant status in our society. Methods. Both qualitative and quantitative methods were used. Material was acquired by questionnaire which was published in internet in Facebook on the wall of Neulonta-group. At the time of publishing there were 23 558 members in the group. The questionnaire was open 8.2–1.3.2017 and it gathered 336 responses. There were 170 responses along in the analysis of material. The participants were 18–72 years old women mainly working and living in two person`s households and they were interested in exercise, reading and animals. In addition to knitting crochet and sewing were the most commonly used techniques that the answerers regularly went in for. Basics, the basics of knitting hobby, open questions and the theme based questions were inquired from answerers. Part of the questions were structured. At the beginning of the analysis the means were calculated from the quantitative material along with the overall time of knitting to each answerer separately which was later used, as computational measure, to indicate the answerer`s amount of going in for. The material was dissected with theme classification which was based in theory of 4C`s of motivation where those themes were challenge, curiosity, control and context. To be able to generalize the material was coded and quantified. After that the basic methods of qualitative analysis themes and types were used. Results and conclusions. Answerers had started knitting at the age of 6–10 years, they had gone in for knitting 3 months – 60 years and the mean time for weekly knitting was 10 hours, fluctuation was considerable 30 minutes – 60 hours. Calculated overall time of knitting varied between 69–132 600 hours. Answerers were basically satisfied with the current time of knitting they went in for. Knitting was the most beloved handcraft technique and mainly the answerers knitted because the joy of it. Knitting is most of all perceived as psychic and the answerers praised the experiences of peace and winding down. It was said that the process mattered more than the product. Flow experiences had had 52,4 % of the answerers. The theory based themes appeared in the material as follows: challenge 15,2 %, curiosity 22,5 %, control 21,6 % and context 32,6 %. The themes arisen from the material were time 1,2 %, money 0,5 % and other motivation factors 6,4 %. 14 different types was formed as it comes to motivation factors being emphasized as go in for knitting where different motivation themes were differently divided. The greatest type had 56 answerers in which the main theme was context and the smallest theme was challenge. Conclusion is that the knitting is motivating in itself and it gives both meaning and time to persons own life outside working life and domestic work – in other words it works as a counterbalance in ordinary days in life. With the results it is possible to trigger, develop and maintain the going in for knitting. Motivation is at its best as an internal flame by which the restricted resources can be allocated in wanted and reasonable way so that the making gives more than it requires. In that case the hobby can bring appropriate increase in one’s life and make it possible to relax, to apprise ones self-actualization and develop both self-esteem and the sense of autonomy.

Traditional 2D cell cultivating vessels and experimental models cannot often simulate natural chemical and physical environment of different cell types. For example, availability of oxygen, chemical gradients, messaging molecules, fluid pressure, flow and surface topography are factors that may affect significantly in cell differentiation, growth, cellular structure, and metabolism. Modular bioreactors like Quasi-Vivo® -system can be used to simulate these factors. Liposomes are particles of phospholipid bilayer with aqueous space enclosed within. They can be modified in numerous ways, like loading them with hydrophobic and hydrophilic molecules, changing their transition temperature or coating them according to different needs. Doxorubicin is effective and widely used cytostatic agent, but when administered as a free drug it has often severe side-effects, like cardiotoxicity. Goal of this thesis is to determine appropriate manufacturing parameters and verify adequate shelf-life of ICG-Doxorubicin liposomes, that they are applicable for future in vitro experiments. Then survival of HepG2 cell line under flow in Quasi-Vivo®-equipment is determined, after which A549 and HepG2 will be then combined into one two-cell model. Finally, a simple illumination experiment in this cell model with previously made liposomes is conducted, and the effect in whole system is examined. Using protocol presented in this thesis it is possible to produce successfully and repeatedly liposomes with both ICG and doxorubicin encapsulation over 70%. Their shelf-life was at least 14 days when stored in 4°C protected from light. This was determined to be sufficient for in vitro testing. Cultivating A549 and HepG2 cell lines combined in the same system with shared media and fluid flow conditions was successful. Neither of the cell lines show significant difference in viability when compared to static control. When light-activating liposomes are administered to the system and then illuminated, from preliminary results we can see significant difference in drug effect. Both illuminated chambers and off-target chambers connected via Quasi-Vivo® show increased suppression, which shows promise that this in vitro model would be useful for future experiments.

While natural language generation (NLG) and large-language models (LLM) seem to be transforming many industries, video games have yet to be affected. This study investigates the potential of using NLG systems to generate dialogue for non-playable characters (NPCs) in role-playing games (RPGs). For this, dialogue data is extracted from six popular RPGs and is then used to fine-tune Microsoft’s GODEL to create an “RPG chatbot” (RPG-GPT). Motivated by computational creativity frameworks, a survey and an interactive experiment were conducted to evaluate the creativity and the effectiveness of RPG-GPT in generating relevant and engaging responses to player input. Survey respondents rated dialogues on a 5-point agree-disagree Likert scale, with questions related to e.g. the relevance of the NPC answers. Results indicate that RPG-GPT can provide relevant responses with a mean difference of game relevance of 3.93 vs. 3.85 of RPG-GPT (p=0.0364). Also, the participants of the interactive experiment reported engagement when interacting with RPG-GPT. Overall, the results suggest that creative NLG has the potential to enhance gaming experiences through task-oriented game dialogue (TOGD) systems. In this framework, creative TOGD systems could solve a common issue where pre-written NPCs are unable to provide the specific information sought by players. Additionally, the study discusses a concept of how players through their interaction with the NLG models can expand the lore of a game, which is a new consideration for game designers and developers when implementing such systems. Future work could explore ways to incorporate external knowledge and context to improve the performance of a TOGD system.

Recent studies show that motivation, emotion, and interest are engaged in learning. Engagement to learning is a complex entity in which the dynamic interaction between the student and the learning environment is central. In addition, students` ability to influence their own learning, mutual cooperation, and meaningful experience in learning strengthens engagement in learning. Recent curriculum on behalf of transversal competence underlines central meaning of these factors in teaching. This is also topical, as the learning outcomes and motivation of children and young people have fallen in recent years. The purpose of this thesis is to study the factors involved engagement in comprehensive school setting during science learning project on 5.–6. grades. The data (n = 74) was collected in spring 2018 from a local school in a metropolitan area during the phenom-enal science learning process in classes 5–6, which was carried out according to inquiry-based learning. The Experience Sampling Form was developed for this thesis in order to study the students' internal experiences during the learning process. Students responded to the questionnaire six times during the five-week working pe-riod, and field notes were also used during analysis of the thesis. Experience Sampling data was used to gener-ate sum variables (motivation, academic emotions, and interest factors), the interconnection was examined by the Spearmans` rank correlation coefficient. On the second phase, the link between the variables and the stages of work (inquiry based learning) was examined by the Kruskall Wallis test and the paired Mann-Whitney U test. The connection between variables and working methods (researching team, whole class) were examined with Cross-Tabulation Analysis, also observations from field notes were produced and compared with the work stages (teacher guidance, information retrieval, evaluation). The formed variables´ correlation is statistically significant to a large extent with each other, so it is justified to investigate these synergies. On the other hand there were no statistically significant differences between work phases and variables, exception was apathy variable, which had statistically significant difference be-tween question making and evaluation. In terms of working habits, students' experiences (somewhat, much) were evenly distributed with activity, insertion and ability variables. Apathy was less experienced and student experienced both ways of working mainly rewarding. Experience of import was less experienced during the en-tire class work and student had less autonomy experience during both working methods. According to findings, interaction and concentration were the most abundant during the work of the research team. The results of this thesis confirm that learning is not about individual factors, but about the complex process of the student and the learning environment. In addition, the students' ability to actively influence their own work and the students’ mutual work reinforce engagement in learning. In summary, it can also be said that phe-nomenal learning according to inquiry-based learning strengthens students' autonomy, interaction and engage-ment to learning. This is significant, because the current curriculum in particular challenges the implementation of teaching to be more cooperative. However, more information about learning is still needed. The purpose of this thesis could be applied more widely in the field of education research so that the engagement in learning could be explored longer term and in among several classes.