According to the “Flow Theory” created by Csikszentmihalyi, students learn in eight different dimensions. Those dimensions are:
1. Clear goals/immediate feedback—which is when the students understand why they are learning what they are learning. (This also relates to Zull; see below.)
2. Equilibrium between challenge and personal skill—the students should be challenged and they also need skill to do so. When these two are at optimal level (not too easy, not too hard) the student will learn best.
3. Merging of action and awareness—students need to be involved and also aware of what they are doing to become involved.
4. Focused attention—students need to be focused while they are learning and not be distracted, otherwise the optimal learning level is gone.
5. Control—when students feel that they are in control, they are motivated to learn.
6. Loss of self consciousness—students need to be able to not worry about themselves and go outside their boundaries.
7. Time distortion—engaging students in an activity is key to time distortion. Once students are engaged fully, the time will seem to pass very quickly since they were involved in the activity they were doing.
8. Self rewarding—students need to be intrinsically motivated and in order to do this, teachers need to stay away from extrinsic rewards as much as possible and use intrinsic rewards. (This also relates to Kohn and Zull.)
The optimal area to be learning is in the flow area. There are two other areas that could also be considered optimal or ideal areas and those are:
Arousal-is the area that most students learn from. The students are pushed beyond comfort zone of skill but are challenged enough to be learning at an idea level.
Control-is the area where students have a high level of skill so they feel comfortable. However, they are not being challenged enough. Students learn in this area but could be challenged more.