One year of evidence-based digital wellness programming
This spring, Virginia Tech celebrates its one-year anniversary as a Certified Digitally Well University in true academic style: with data.
Over the past year, Laurie Fritsch, assistant director of Hokie Wellness, has spearheaded evidence-based programs to empower students to engage with their digital devices in a way that maximizes their quality of life.
Fritsch has worked with Christina Crook, author of “The Joy of Missing Out: Finding Balance in a Wired World,” to create a JOMO(Campus) campaign. The campaign presents fun and easy digital wellness opportunities to students, such as conversation cards placed in communal areas and weekly challenge prompts posted in residence halls.
The most immersive initiative is JOMO’s 4-Week Digital Well-being Challenge. Participants complete pre-assessment and post-assessment and, while there were incremental improvements across the board, the largest improvements were concentrated in students’ productivity category:
Distraction: Students reporting going online for one purpose but becoming otherwise distracted decreased from 49 percent to 43 percent.
Procrastination: Students reporting that they use apps, social media, or games to procrastinate dropped from 67 percent to 56 percent.
Single tasking: Students reporting that they complete an intended task before working on something new increased from 39 percent to 44 percent.
Focus: Students reporting that they close distracting apps or use Do Not Disturb features when needing to focus on homework or a project increased from 39 percent to 44 percent.
