Abstract
Leadership courses are considered to be an import¬ant curricular component in colleges of agriculture throughout the United States with many of them now offering agricultural leadership majors. Many students entering colleges of agriculture had leadership training experience prior to college through involvement in the National FFA Organization and/or 4-H. However, many did not participate in an organized leadership program. Socio-Psychological measures of “flow” during an under¬graduate leadership course were used to determine rela¬tionships of undergraduates with and without previous leadership experience. Flow Theory was used to deter¬mine relationships between: 1) students’ prior leader¬ship training and number of “flow” experiences; 2) “flow” experiences and intrinsic motivation and engagement; and 3) “flow” and domains of learning in an undergradu¬ate leadership course. There was a positive relationship between “flow” and students within an undergraduate leadership course who had previous exposure to leader¬ship (38.8%). Additionally, undergraduate students were more likely to be in “flow” when participating in activi¬ties in the cognitive (39.4%), psychomotor (40.9%) and affective (32.7%) domains of learning. Using the Expe¬rience Sampling Method (ESM) to determine “flow” relationships with undergraduate learning expands the current suite of instruments available to understand leadership classroom experiences.