Browsing by Subject "ydintunteet"

Objectives. This thesis examines how students participating in a new kind of university course construct their academic emotions in relation to a blended and student-activating learning environment. Closer examination is paid to the practices, tools, and interactions students felt mediating optimal or harmful learning experiences. Students' emotional experiences of the learning context could be further used in developing innovative learning environments. Methods. This thesis is a qualitative case study in which the phenomenon under study is the quality and nature of students' academic emotions in relation to a university course. The research materials were students' written learning journals (N=20) which were produced during the duration of the course. Students’ academic emotions and experiences of the learning context were analyzed qualitatively by a phenomenological research approach. Qualitative analysis was guided by applying Yiks ym., (1999) multidimensional core affect theory, and understanding of the quality of students' academic emotions was deepened by examining the students' reported experiences of challenge and competence (Csikszentmihalyi, 2013) and control and value (Pekrun, 2006). Results and conclusion. Students experienced the course as activating, and inspirational and reported it being meaningful in relation to their professional development. The course was also considered challenging and frustrating, the single most reported affect being confusion. Many of the activating emotional experiences were constructed in relation to the course’s phenomenon project which was considered engaging but confusing and challenging. Emotions most optimal for learning were reported in relation to the small group work and peer feedback. Some of the students reported feelings of confusion and frustration towards lack of sufficient guidance. Feelings of boredom and frustration were felt towards the usability of the course’s digital environment which was not considered optimal for learning. Feelings of confusion and frustration seem to be part courses which use student activating practices and therefore there needs to be enough support to process these emotions. The results of this study give some indication of the practices, interactions and tools enhancing and hindering students’ academic confusion, but topic needs to be further studied.

Flow experience is often defined either as an experience of high concentration and enjoyment or as a situation, where high challenges are matched with high skills. According to core-emotion theories, the experience of any emotion contains two core emotions: valence and arousal. Through an accurate mathematical model, the present study investigated, whether the experience of concentration and enjoyment is related to situations where both challenge and skills are high and in balance. Further, it was investigated what sort of core emotions are related to differing relationships between challenge and skills. Finally, university students' experiences of their natural study environments were described in terms of core emotions and in terms of relationships between challenge and skills. Participants were 55 university students who participated two weeks research period. Altogether 3367 questionnaire answers were collected with the CASS experience-sampling method, operating in 3G-mobile phones. The relationship between challenge and skills (competence) was defined in an exact way in polar coordinates. An enjoyable and concentrated flow experience was defined as a sum variable of absorption, interest and enthusiasm. Core emotions were calculated with factor analysis from nine emotion variables. As expected, an experience of concentration and enjoyment was, on average, related to the situations where both challenge and skills were high and in balance. This was not, however, the case in every situation. Thus, it should be taken into consideration how flow experience is operationalised in experience sampling studies. When flow experience was defined as a situation of high challenge and high skills, it was often related to high valence and arousal emotions such as excitement or enthusiasm. A happier or a more tranquil enjoyment was related to situations of moderate challenge and high skills. Experiences differed clearly between various natural study environments. At lectures students were often bored or mentally absent, and did not experience challenges. In a small group students were often excited or enthusiastic, and showed optimal balance between challenge and skills. At library students felt satisfied and were engaged in highly challenging work.