Flow and Professional Identity through Lived Experiences of Doctoral Students in an Online Immersive Instructional Framework

Abstract

This qualitative phenomenological study explored the lived experiences of doctoral students engaged in an immersive instructional framework within an online course on Adult Learning Strategies. The purpose was to examine how immersive design elements (De Leon, 2020) and flow theory as defined through Csikszentmihalyi’s (1990) and Shin’s (2006) helped participant engagement via enjoyment, telepresence, focused attention, and time distortion. Participants completed five narrative journals across two immersive modules designed with multimodal, authentic, interactive, and autonomous elements. Data analysis followed Moustakas’ (1994) phenomenological reduction, including bracketing, horizontalizing, thematic clustering, and a synthesized essence of experience. Results revealed that students experienced flow primarily through engagement and telepresence, with enjoyment and focused attention also present, while time distortion was notably absent. Participants connected deeply with the content through professional relevance, introspection, and emotional resonance, showing that immersive environments can validate learners’ professional identities and enhance motivation. The study suggests immersive design can enable flow through meaningful engagement in graduate-level online learning through relevance, multimodal interactive design, and career or profession validation. The essence that emerged was the idea that professional identity can be defined through immersive experiences to make sense of the learning.