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51
© The Author(s) 2018. Published by Oxford University Press; all rights reserved.
ELT Journal Volume 73/1 January 2019; doi:10.1093/elt/ccy025 51
Advance Access publication June 28, 2018
Shared, sustained flow: triggering
motivation with collaborative
projects
Zana Ibrahim and Ali H. Al-Hoorie
Flow refers to a special experience of total absorption in one task. Sustained
flow (also known as directed motivational currents) is the occurrence of
flow in a series of tasks aimed at achieving a certain outcome (for example
improving proficiency in a second language). In this article, we investigate
shared, sustained flow—which occurs when a group of individuals working
collaboratively experience sustained flow. Interviews were conducted with
five participants (two teachers and three students) to find out the conditions
perceived to have facilitated this experience during pre-sessional language
courses at two British universities. The results point to three main conditions:
forming a group identity, attaching personal value and providing partial
autonomy. We discuss how teachers can apply these findings to design
motivational out-of-class activities.
An area that has recently attracted some interest in the L2 motivation
literature is the so-called directed motivational currents (DMC, Dörnyei,
Henry, and Muir 2016; Al-Hoorie 2017). DMC refers to an intense
motivational drive sustained over a period of time. DMC experiences are
very similar to flow (Csikszentmihalyi 1990). Both flow and DMC involve
the unique experience of total absorption, the pursuit of a goal in a rather
structured and predictable manner, and the satisfied feeling after that
experience. The primary difference between flow and DMC is that DMC is
‘a prolonged process of engagement in a series of tasks’ (Dörnyei, Ibrahim,
and Muir 2015: 5, original emphasis). Both flow and DMC are potentially
relevant to ELT due to the markedly high motivation they generate in
learners.
In this article, we refer to the DMC phenomenon as sustained flow for
two reasons. First, this term explicitly acknowledges the contribution of
the mother ‘flow’ construct. Adding an adjective to qualify the original
construct is in line with other recent developments in this field such as
experiential flow, directed flow (Novak, Hoffman, and Duhachek 2003),
shared flow (Nakamura and Csikszentmihalyi 2009), social flow (Walker
2010), collective flow (Salanova, Rodríguez-Sánchez, Schaufeli, and Cifre
2014) and relational flow (Moore, Drake, Tschannen-Moran, Campone,
Introduction
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and Kauffman 2005). Second, following this convention would avoid
contributing to the unnecessary proliferation of terminology that is
witnessed recently in the field. That is, we feel that a growing number of
terms are being introduced to the L2 motivation field without adequate
attention to the resulting terminological overlap and its consequences.
One example is the proliferation of ‘selves’, including anti-ought-to,
rebellious, imposed, bilingual, multilingual, private, public, possible,
and probable selves. Such terminological proliferation raises the risk
that researchers would speak different languages even when they study
very similar phenomena (cf. Dörnyei and Ryan 2015: 102). In the hope of
avoiding this situation, we refer to a DMC experience as ‘sustained flow’,
even though the two terms refer to the same phenomenon.
A second area that has recently attracted interest is out-of-class learning
activities (for example Nunan and Richards 2015). Such activities provide
the opportunity for autonomous, collective and extended engagement with
the language. Although some out-of-class activities require a relatively
short time to complete (for example one night), other projects require
a collective effort extended over longer periods such as weeks or even a
whole semester. When such projects are authentic (for example working
for a charity, or presenting before a real audience), research suggests that
learners enjoy the activity and improve their language proficiency (Pontes
and Shimazumi 2015).
Shared, sustained flow (SSF) occurs when groupwork is coupled with flow
over a period of time, potentially making learning both effective and highly
enjoyable. However, this type of activity poses unique challenges to teachers.
On the one hand, the nature of preparation required is different from that
of everyday lessons. Teachers are responsible for ensuring that the learners
engage in productive groupwork, manage the various aspects involved
in their project, and avoid distractions and procrastination—all of which
without the teacher’s direct supervision (as such activities are occurring
outside the classroom). On the other hand, there is little evidence-based
guidelines for teachers about how to prepare for such activities, especially
when it comes to the conditions that could facilitate SSF experiences.
Because SSF could potentially be a highly stimulating activity that ELT
teachers can utilise in many contexts, and because there is little research
that sheds light on this unique phenomenon, we attempted to fill this
gap by examining experiences of successful SSF. We conducted a
qualitative study in order to obtain a rich description of these experiences.
Our primary research question was: What are the conditions that the
participants believe facilitated their SSF experience? By ‘conditions’, we
did not limit ourselves to initial conditions, but also investigated other
factors maintaining the SSF experience or satisfaction derived from it. We
believe that this is an important question as it might offer valuable insight
to ELT teachers regarding how to design effective out-of-class activities.
A call for participants was announced on social media and circulated
among different universities and language schools in the UK. The call
invited both students who experienced SSF and teachers who observed
it. All cases that came forward were evaluated against the standard SSF
Methodology
Data collection
52 Ibrahim and Al-Hoorie
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criteria: goal-orientedness, positive emotionality and structure. Structure
consists of predictable stages that SSF typically goes through, including
launch, behavioural routines, progress checks, affirmative feedback and
closure (Dörnyei, Henry, and Muir 2016). Many cases were excluded for
being typical motivational experiences rather than SSF (see Ibrahim 2016
for details).
The data presented here were collected from two teachers (Sophie and
Leila). These two particular cases were selected because they represent
a context of interest to many ELT practitioners: pre-sessional courses on
English for academic purposes. In these courses, students whose L1 is not
English are required to attain a sufficient level of proficiency before they
can enrol in their (typically graduate) studies. The two cases also came
from two different British universities, thus lowering the possibility of
reporting features idiosyncratic to a particular university. Furthermore,
unlike some other cases that came forward, both of these cases occurred
shortly before the call for participants, making the experience relatively
fresh in their memory.
The first teacher, Sophie, observed the occurrence of SSF while teaching
a public speaking course. She described an SSF experience occurring over
a whole semester. The second teacher, Leila, identified two project groups
of students who stood out as uniquely motivated while preparing for a
presentation project called ‘the booster weekend’. This project lasted over
a three-day weekend due to a bank holiday in the UK.
Because the teachers provided retrospective accounts of these motivational
surges experienced by their students, we utilized a number of strategies to
achieve validity. First, we attempted to contact some of the students who
had experienced SSF first-hand. We were able to interview three students
from Leila’s class: Haun, Tom and Sami. Both teachers were interviewed
face-to-face, while the students provided answers to questions via email or
phone. All contacts were made in English.
Second, instead of describing the theoretical components of SSF, we gave
the participants the classic SSF example of an overweight person going
through a regimen for a while in pursuit of losing weight. The participants
were then asked to describe how they experienced their long-term
engagement and what their feelings were like throughout. Third, validity
check measures were sought once the themes were produced for each
participant’s narrative. The participants were given written summaries of
emergent themes to check whether each reflected an accurate account of
their experiences.
Finally, our data collection approach relied heavily on volunteers coming
forward, and therefore self-selection bias might have had an effect on our
results. We discuss this limitation and its implications later.
All interviews were transcribed verbatim, resulting in a corpus of 11,232
words. We employed a two-stage approach to the analysis. First, to gain
descriptive accounts of what happened, we utilized a phenomenological
approach to capture the ‘universal essence’ and meaning of the
phenomenon in question as lived and experienced by our participants
Data analysis
Shared, sustained flow: triggering motivation with collaborative projects 53
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(Creswell 2007: 58). Second, to learn about what might have contributed
to the SSF cases, a thematic analysis method was deployed to ‘highlight
the most salient constellations of meanings present in the dataset’ (Joffe
2012: 209).
At the first stage of the analysis, the entire dataset was examined to extract
a list of non-overlapping statements. Three criteria were employed for
selecting these statements. First, a statement needed to be around an
SSF experience (for example not giving a general opinion on how to best
learn an L2). Second, it had to provide a new—not repeated—piece of
information. All the similar codes with variations, slight or prominent,
were fully considered. Third, a statement had to involve a descriptive
or narrative account reflecting what happened or how it happened,
respectively. The entire data analysis involved an iterative process to
identify these themes. Close attention was paid to ensure that the final
themes thoroughly and closely represented the dominant themes, and
so the final presentation described the bulk of the data rather than
deliberately selecting extracts to support specific claims.
At the second stage of the analysis, a thematic approach was used to allow
for interpretation of ‘explicit and implicit content’ (Joffe 2012: 209). At
this stage, rather than generating statements that explicitly described a
motivational state, attempts were made to develop themes that would
best reflect the data and hence explain why the participants experienced
what they reported they did. The analysis was conducted in an inductive
(bottom-up) approach allowing the opportunity for reaching data-driven
findings.
Despite these safeguards, we acknowledge that our qualitative approach,
by its nature, will always inherently involve an element of subjectivity.
However, we hope that it would also provide richer data to which many
readers could relate.
Overall, the results revealed that the students in both cases went through
experiences described as unique. That is, the students interviewed
believed that the interest and motivation during these times were above
the average levels typical of other classroom activities. This elevated
level of motivation was also very evident to the teachers, emerging as a
recurrent theme throughout the analysis.
One student, for example, described his experience as ‘a really great
experience and unforgettable memory’ (Tom Q1), while another recalled
that it was the most motivating project he had: ‘the experience was overall
amazing and enriching and satisfying’ (Sami Q1). Sami also argued that
all group members shared a very similar feeling:
The good thing was that everybody was motivated, everyone was
motivated. However, some people were motivated but they didn’t
show it, but we knew they were motivated. Some people were silent
all the time, so we find some other work for them in order for their
participating, like one girl, her conversation skill was not very good,
so we just assigned her to write the script and just write everything
we do, and she was motivated to do it and she was valuable for the
Results and discussion
Overall motivation
54 Ibrahim and Al-Hoorie
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group. So everybody was doing something specific and everyone was
motivated. (Sami Q2)
The teachers agreed with this view. For example, Sophie believed that all
of the group members, including those who were otherwise unmotivated,
displayed interest during the group project:
Based on that presentation, they were all equally involved and
enthusiastic. There was one Thai girl who was not interested in the
course at all; she was always on the phone, not interested. But during
the presentation, she was very much there; she was really really
involved, and as motivated as the others. (Sophie Q1)
In terms of location, these experiences took place outside classrooms.
Because the time students had during class was limited, the students
were able to devote more time and energy as they worked outside the
classroom. Their out-of-class projects involved extended (but informal)
meetings and discussions, which further facilitated a sense of purpose and
the seriousness of the task. Leila described the productivity of her students
as they worked outside the class:
in just about two days, they produced a massive amount of work that
showed that their motivational level was very high… they spent pretty
much every minute of that weekend working… and they worked much
harder and the quality of work was higher. (Leila Q1)
Analysis of the interviews revealed three main conditions facilitating
the SSF experiences: forming a group identity, attaching personal
value and providing partial autonomy. These three themes appeared
consistently in the data from both the students and their teachers. The
following discussion elaborates on these themes and then reflects on
their implications for ELT teachers. Readers interested in more detailed
analyses are referred to Ibrahim (2016) for a complete presentation.
The data suggest that forming a group identity is perhaps the most crucial
feature facilitating SSF experiences. At first, individual members went
through an initial challenging stage while forming this shared identity.
For example, Sophie explained that her students first struggled to function
as a group:
But after a few sessions, I could see that the group gradually became
more cohesive… Part of it, I think, is because they developed friendship
among themselves. So they liked each other. (Sophie Q1)
Likewise, the students had the perception that they were now part of a
collective unit aiming towards one shared goal and being assessed based
on their collective performance. This pushed them all to put in effort
to excel at the final product. Tom (Q2), for example, noted: ‘Our group
members were assessed together. If I didn’t do my role in a team, our
team got lower marks. In other words, not me but all.’ This shared final
goal seems to have motivated them and helped them to develop stronger
relationships and to work collectively. As Haun (Q1) stated: ‘To finish
Conditions
facilitating SSF
Forming a group identity
Shared, sustained flow: triggering motivation with collaborative projects 55
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task we have to stay together and have more chance to know each other…
Everybody have the same aim to win the prize, so we are all motivated.’
A further factor that facilitated the resulting rapport seems to be the
opportunity to meet off campus. As an illustration, Sami described that
the cohesiveness of the group increased when they met at an informal
setting. The relaxed atmosphere seems to have made the group members
more comfortable:
we thought about working in the library, but the library would close on
Monday, but Janna, one of the team members, said ‘I have six chairs in
my kitchen in my flat’. And we were all friends with Janna. And she was
also open and easy-going person, so she also said she would cook for us
on the first day… (Sami Q2).
As a result, they formed high expectations towards their final outcome,
which would be the result of working together as a group. Sami (Q3) felt
that their collective effort to produce the final poster and presentation was
rewarding at the end of the project: ‘And when we finished, we all thanked
each other, we knew we did a great job, you know what I mean.’
The data indicate that the SSF experience was facilitated when the group
felt they identified with the activity. In one case, the students initially
questioned the benefits of the assigned project until they personally
and individually associated with its value. In addition to signalling the
linguistic benefits, students needed to endorse their activities as valuable
to their personal lives such as by knowing how it might make them better
people or how they could benefit from the content of the activity in the
long run. Seeing the linguistic value of a project was not sufficient to
promote SSF. Sophie, for example, first tried to convince her students of
the linguistic value of the activity:
So I would be telling them actually whatever jobs that you have…
even I was telling them that when you talk to your boss in a lift, that’s
a bit like small talks that you do, which are not public speaking, but
conversation and that’s still presentation in a sense. (Sophie Q3)
But that did not seem enough. The students also had to find a topic of
personal value:
they were struggling, they were still looking for a topic, and then they
found a topic which they liked. It was about Facebook… so, they could
relate, they liked the topic, and they knew that people would find it
exciting… they found something important and meaningful to talk
about. (Sophie Q4)
The students similarly reported that the personal relevance of the activity
enhanced their motivation:
My interest is designing the poster to make it more appealing. It is
something you have genius freedom to do what you want like a really
business person instead of utilising business tool which is too limited
thing you can do. (Huan Q2)
Attaching personal value
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we had to present in front of the whole course, which was about 100
students. And it was motivating for me because I like presenting in
front of people, and when we started I thought it would boost my self-
confidence or it would boost my presentation skills more. (Sami Q4)
In the SSF cases, the groups refrained from seeking much advice from
their instructors mainly because they thought it could jeopardize their
sense of efficacy and autonomous accomplishment. Although the learners
were provided with clear assessment criteria and enough instructions on
the expected final product, their autonomy was not restricted in terms of
how they were to reach their target. This level of autonomy seems to have
helped them embrace their project and foster a sense of belonging and
group pride as they drew from each other’s resources and expertise.
Although autonomy was helpful, there were at least two aspects where
the teacher’s support appeared to still be important—thus the label
‘partial’ autonomy. First, teachers had to give adequate explanation of
the target outcomes so that the students could have a clear picture of the
requirements. For example, Leila reported that her students needed initial
guidance before becoming autonomous:
So they had to work together on their own with no help from us really
apart from the initial, first half an hour of guidance… So it was quite
autonomous in that way. (Leila Q3)
A second area where groups might need help is suggesting group leaders.
The data suggest that a charismatic leader plays a central role in reaching
group consensus and cohesion. Once such a leader is selected, groupwork
can proceed more smoothly. Tom reported a vivid SSF experience once he
became a group leader:
I checked time, each member’s task and progress of our job. Being
a leader itself made me more involved in that project… I took full
responsibility of our project. Not to fail the project, I checked everything
in my group. And when someone’s task was beyond or below my
expectation, I helped that member and reallocated our tasks to do our
project efficiently. (Tom Q1)
These three conditions are by no means a revelation to the ELT field.
However, our analyses suggest that their combination in out-of-class
projects may facilitate SSF.
Many teachers would appreciate the opportunity to engage their students
in out-of-class activities that are both stimulating and effective. However,
little guidance is currently available for teachers, especially in the context
of inducing SSF experiences. The previous section has presented three
conditions that, according to the participants, were instrumental in
facilitating SSF experiences. This section summarizes these conditions
and reflects on their implications to teachers.
First, an important condition is the formation of a group identity. When
the students felt that they were working as a cohesive group towards a
common goal, they became more motivated and more productive. This
suggests that teachers should ensure that the activity is not perceived
Providing partial
autonomy
Implications for ELT
teachers
Shared, sustained flow: triggering motivation with collaborative projects 57
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merely as a language task, but also a social opportunity for students to
demonstrate their group identity. For example, the students could discuss
issues like project title, group name, roles of each member and social
activities (such as group dinners). To enhance pride in the activity, an
external audience may be invited for the final presentation, which could
be filmed. As such, the groupwork may become a stimulating social event
rather than merely an academic assignment to gain grades.
Second, to achieve a group identity, individual members also need to
recognize both the personal value of the project, as well as the prospect of
succeeding as a group. Teachers therefore can help students to develop
a sense of ownership through activities that students find authentic and
meaningful, and that also go beyond merely improving certain aspects of
the language. Examples include asking students to conduct a study about
an important community issue and to present the findings in front of city
officials and the public, or to collect data to find solutions to an important
educational or social problem such as bullying or drug addiction.
Similarly, a project on ways to improve the lives of homeless people or
sick children might stimulate a powerful SSF-inducing project because it
is perceived as meaningful, worthwhile and also gaining people’s respect
and admiration.
Third, providing adequate autonomy to the group members would
increase the personal value of the activity and the sense of ownership.
The students could be given the chance to choose individual roles, when
and where they study together, and how they deliver the final outcome.
At the same time, it may be an overstatement to say that teachers should
give their students full autonomy to do what they want, because designing
effective tasks requires a lot of preparation on the part of the teacher. It is
therefore more accurate to describe it as partial autonomy. Furthermore,
some students might fall back to familiar tasks at the expense of gaining
new skills (cf. the girl in Sami Q2 above), and this is an area where the
teacher’s intervention can be beneficial. Most of the teacher’s work
takes place in the initial stages of the project, such as clarifying its goals,
timeline, and other requirements. Students can ‘earn’ more autonomy
once they demonstrate sufficient understanding of the task and the
teacher’s expectations.
In addition to the above conditions, other considerations emerging from
the data include choosing an appropriate time-scale and group size.
In the SSF cases, two time-scales were observed: semester-long and
weekend-long. The choice was rather pragmatic, considering students’
curricular and extra-curricular load, exam times and breaks, in addition
to students’ availability and willingness to engage in the project within
the assigned time-scale. The semester-long project required several hours
of preparation per week, whereas the weekend-long one required a more
intensified effort. The weekend-long seems more appropriate for projects
not requiring special resources that might be available only during
working days (for example labs).
At the same time, we are hesitant to recommend inducing SSF too
frequently. We speculate that this could lead to student burnout. Instead,
it might be more appropriate to view it as a motivational injection
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introduced occasionally with careful consideration of the situation.
Poorly-designed SSF activities may not only lead to failure but also to
student frustration.
In terms of group size, the SSF cases suggest that large groups may
be less likely to achieve SSF. Larger groups pose challenges to group
cohesiveness as well as providing less room for individual contribution.
Smaller groups of five to ten may be more effective. For this reason, both
teachers divided their classes into groups with the same final goal and
assessment criteria.
Finally, in some SSF cases, students showed a certain level of frustration
when they did not win a final prize even though they thought they had
produced an outstanding product based on their unprecedented amount
of collective effort. Therefore, just valuing the product without regard to
effort expended to produce it might lead to student dissatisfaction.
An important limitation of the current study is that, because SSF
experiences are relatively rare, we had to recruit our sample through a
call for participants. It is plausible that this small sample may not be
representative of others who did not come forward. This self-selection
bias constitutes a potential threat to external validity, where the results
may not be generalizable. Still, this is not atypical of early research into
a novel area. To address this limitation, further research is needed to
explore different teaching contexts. Indeed, different contexts involve
unique dynamics and pose different challenges (for example younger
learners), thus possibly requiring an alternative set of conditions to initiate
and maintain SSF. Having said this, the results emerging from our study
seem reasonably easily translatable to many teaching contexts. Overall, we
believe that our results can provide important insights into SSF, as well as
potential directions for future intervention research.
Final version received February 2018
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The authors
Zana Ibrahim is the chair of the English Department
at the University of Kurdistan Hewlêr. He holds a
PhD in English from the University of Nottingham,
and an MA in TESOL from the Indiana University
of Pennsylvania. He has taught courses in academic
reading and writing, language acquisition, applied
linguistics, TESOL, and materials development
at several universities in Kurdistan. His research
interests lie mainly in the area of SLA and pedagogy,
applied linguistics, L2 motivation, complexity
theory, and positive affect. He is the co-theorist of
the directed motivational currents concept and has
co-authored the first publication on the construct.
Email: zana.ibrahim@ukh.edu.krd
Ali H. Al-Hoorie is an assistant professor at the
English Language Institute, Jubail Industrial College,
Saudi Arabia. He completed his PhD degree at the
University of Nottingham under the supervision of
Professors Zoltán Dörnyei and Norbert Schmitt. He
also holds an MA in Social Science Data Analysis
from Essex University. His research interests include
motivation theory, research methodology, and
complexity.
Email: hoorie_a@jic.edu.sa
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