ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Educational Psychology
Exploring Learning Engagement among Spanish Undergraduates in Asia: The Chain Mediating Roles of Flow Experience and Self-Determined Motivation in Short Video Platform Use
Provisionally accepted
Lin Liang1*
Shasha Wang2- 1Henan University of Science and Technology, Luoyang, China
- 2Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain
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This paper examines the effects of the use of short video platform on the engagement of learning among undergraduate students who major in Spanish in Asia, with the chained conditioning features of flow experience and self-determined motivation. As short video sites grow at a very high rate especially in Asia, short videos have become part and parcel of the life of university students. Although short videos are easy to access due to their low barriers, they have their own set of problems like distraction, and wastage of time. Investigating the impact of functional (as well as recreational) short video platform uses in the process of learning engagement and its psychological mechanisms, a survey of 412 Spanish majors in China, Japan, South Korea, and Vietnam using a questionnaire served as the sources of data. The findings indicate that (1) functional use plays a significant part in improving learning engagement (total effect 0.677) by reinforcing flow experience (0.815, p < 0.001), and self-determined motivation (0.326, p < 0.001), where the mediating effect of flow ( flow experience) on motivation ( recreational use) is chained (26.6% 0.180). Such results inform teachers of the theoretical knowledge about how short video platforms can be used to facilitate better student learning, but they also warn about the negative impact that overuse of recreational platform in designing the learning process can have. The future investigation should also examine the effect of various forms of the short video content and provide its expansion to other language learning environments and cultural contexts, which will enrich the applicability of short videos in educational studies.
Keywords: flow experience, language learning, Learning engagement, Self-determined motivation, short video platforms
Received: 20 Sep 2025; Accepted: 06 Jan 2026.
Copyright: © 2026 Liang and Wang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Lin Liang
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