Experiences of digital education from the perspective of students. Digital language learning and flow-based methods in teaching English for law enforcement

Abstract

According to some literature about communication in a target language, digital competency and creativity are highly important, and achieving this is exceedingly feasible with the methods employed in experiential education.The aim of the present study was to identify the advantages and disadvantages of the online and offline digital education of students at the University of Public Service (hereinafter: UPS) in Budapest, Hungary, utilizing planned experience-based research. The relevance of the research covers two independent and separate quantitative research themes: 1. digital education during the first period of the coronavirus pandemic; and 2. online quantitative exploratory research. The results of the research support the planned experience-based research and confirm it is suitable for measuring the “flow state” of students, where flow is the optimal state where someone is fully engaged in a task at hand with little distraction. It was revealed that students can reach a high flow state when participating in a digital learning environment, which facilitates high motivation to participate in the lessons and has positive effects on the development of the students’ communication and digital competences.