(2) High challenge and high skill
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‘Does the LWL experience have a balance of high challenge and high skills?’
According to Csikzentmihalyi (1988, 1997), the experience of flow is defined as an optimal pleasurable experience when a person totally engaged in an activity or task, to an extent, that he or she feel strong, alert, in effortless control, unselfconscious and at the peak of his or her abilities. It is most likely to happen when the activity was at high challenge and equipped with high skill. From subsequent research, ‘High skill-high challenge’ experience is found to be a building block of developing an ‘autotelic self’, a person who can easily translate potential threats into enjoyable challenges in later lives (Goleman, 1996, Watkins, 2000). In order to provide quality experience in LWL activity, teachers or course designers should carefully monitor balance of high challenge and high skills in all learning tasks. Negative feelings such as anxiety (high challenge & low skills), boredom (low challenge & high skills) could arise if failure in striking the balance (see quality descriptors (-ve) below).
Quality descriptors (-ve):
“I’m too bored”- Do most students feel bored in the whole activity?
“I’m too anxious” – Do most students feel unreasonably anxious about their performance in the activity?
“I wish to be doing something else” – Would most student wish to do something else when asked?
“Low challenge” – Is the task/ activity viewed as not challenging at all?
“Low skill” – Do most students not have sufficient skills to participate in the activity?
[Boredom/Anxiety-----------------------Autotelic experience/ intrinsically rewarding]
5 3 1 0
Quality Indicator: High skills, high challenge
| Emerging | Established | Advanced |
| Teachers ensure students to have sufficient skills to perform tasks in the event. Teachers carefully arrange certain ‘motivating stimuli’ to offer reasonable challenge to students. Despite the effort, the experience still has at least 3 negative descriptors. | Teachers treated skills and challenge, as dynamic variables in the activity. Individual learning styles and differences are taken into account. Teachers are ready to adjust the skills/ challenge balance during the activity. Less than 3 negative descriptors. | Students also take the responsibility to adjust the balance (e.g. students choose a higher level of work when they perceived the challenge is too low). Students and teachers jointly manage the experience, as co-directors in order to ensure everyone to have an intrinsically rewarding activity/ event. Have only 0-1 negative descriptors. |