Love of Learning Survey
Description
This data is a cross-sectional survey of 112 students from Spring 2023. The setting is Franklin University Switzerland, a small joint American-Swiss Liberal Arts college in Lugano, Switzerland. The variables include the students' year of study, major, academic travel frequency, as well as self-reported GPA, love of learning, and 10 classroom related psychological Flow variables, indexed via averaging. Relationships between variables and differences between groups can be explored to better understand learning factors and create educational policy.
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Steps to reproduce
Students were invited to voluntarily complete a 5-minute “Learning Research Study” online survey while in class. To begin the online survey, information regarding students’ current year of institutional study (e.g., freshmen, sophomore, junior, senior, or other), university major, and current grade point average (GPA) were gathered. Students were then asked to note how many academic travel courses they had completed. Outside demographic data gathering, the key factors captured in the survey are students’ GPA, Flow, and love of learning. Rather than relying on student records, GPA was reported by each student from memory. Students’ experience of flow was measured by the Core Dispositional Flow Scale (C DFS). The C DFS (Jackson et al., 2022) is a 10-item instrument used to assess the frequency with which Flow is experienced during an activity. In this case, students were asked to consider how often they experienced flow-related thoughts and feelings while “Learning or studying new things.” Responses were provided using the C DFS 5-point Likert-scale ranging from “Never” to “Always.” Once complete, all 10 items of the C DFS were averaged to provide an overall Flow scale score or Flow Index. To assess students’ self-perceived love of learning, a researcher-derived item asking, “On a scale of 1-10, how would you rate your love of learning?” was included in the survey. Responses could range from 1 = little to no love of learning, up to 10 = very strong love of learning. Like the Cantril (1965) Life Ladder, the most used one-factor measure of Wellbeing, this single item question was designed to be broad, assessing students’ more general love of learning, not overtly defined, allowing the students themselves to individually define and assess their love of learning.