From Passive to Pleasant: Validation and Application of the Learning Enjoyment Scale in Didactic Teaching

Learning enjoyment significantly influences motivation, enthusiasm, and overall learning experiences. Past studies, lacking an objective tool for measuring enjoyment and facing diverse influencing factors, have yielded conflicting results on the enjoyment levels of instructional methods.

This study aimed to validate the Learning Enjoyment Scale (LES) as an objective tool for measuring students' enjoyment in teaching sessions, and to apply it in evaluating the enjoyment of first-year students in Physiology lectures.

We developed the Learning Enjoyment Scale (LES) to assess students' enjoyment during learning activities. The scale consists of two sections, each with six items rated on a five-point Likert scale. The first section yields a quantitative value for cross-comparisons between various teaching activities, and its total score is categorized as excellent, acceptable, or low. The second section is employed to evaluate specific factors known to impact the overall enjoyment score. In a cross-sectional study, we applied the LES to 112 first-year medical and dental students immediately following didactic physiology lectures.

The LES demonstrated high reliability (0.914), indicating robust internal consistency among its items. Of all participants, 55% achieved an acceptable total LES score, 40% achieved an excellent score, and 5% received a low score. Enjoyment of physiology lectures exhibited a significant correlation with several factors, including teachers' proficiency, difficulty with the topic, active student participation, fulfillment of objectives, a low level of stress during the activity, and self-perception of acquired skills (P < 0.001).

This study underscores the reliability of the Learning Enjoyment Scale (LES) as a valuable tool for assessing teaching activities and analyzing associated factors. The LES revealed that the lectures are well received by undergraduate students, emphasizing their enduring significance as a crucial instructional method in higher education.