Interesting to see how Flow Theory has been linked to CBLE. A few questions regarding motivation and challenge:
1. Can extrinsic motivation help in learning when there is no intrinsic motivation? Taking the analogy of computer games, can a totally immersive game be "engaging" if the player is not intrinsically motivated? To me, it seems that extrinsic motivation works only when intrinsic motivation is already present. It's hard for me to imagine a person who hates guns being engaged in playing Doom. Doesn't extrinsic motivation ride on existing intrinsic motivation? The intrinsic motivation might arise, in the case of computer games, out of personal fantasies (Doom) or interest in puzzles (Mystic).
2. If significant learning takes place purely as a result of extrinsic motivation, what is the nature of that learning? For example, if I am not interested in learning about city planning, what do I learn when I play SimCity?
3. The question of appropriate level of challenge (reminds me of Vygotsky's zone of proximal development) is a big one, especially in CBLE (less so in a classroom where a good teacher can adjust the level according to student characteristics). Computer games usually address this through pre-defined levels of complexity. Can we address this in CBLE through adaptive/intelligent systems? Are there examples of such systems that didn't cost a fortune to build? Or, can we sufficiently address the problem using pre-defined levels of complexity (e.g., increasingly complex microworlds)?