Today is the UN International Day of Happiness. So be happy... If only it were that simple! We know it's not, and the area of psychology that I am most involved in is 'positive psychology' which is dedicated to the scientific study of topics such as happiness, wellbeing, flourishing, and so on.
The reason I mention this here is today has also seen the launch of a new website, www.thepositivepsychologypeople.com, that aims to promote positive psychology around the world. The website has been developed by a small team, of whom a number are some of our first cohort of MAPP graduates who completed the MAPP in 2014. It is therefore a project that has very much grown out of the MAPP, and something that we are keen to see develop and grow.
As I learn more about the concept of 'communities of practice' (e.g., Wenger, 1998), I am wondering if 'The Positive Psychology People' (also on twitter as @ThePPPeople) is something that might, in time, form the basis of a community of practice for positive psychology in general, and our students and graduates in particular. More on this in later posts.
Reference
Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity. New York: Cambridge University Press.
One of the projects I was working on over the past year was something I was calling 'Go Luck Yourself!' (GLY!), a research project in which I wanted to explore the impact of certain apsects of positive psychology upon people's experiences of 'luck'. The project built upon previous research I had conducted on the psychology luck that formed my PhD (something I have blogged a little about elsewhere).
The GLY! project involved six fortnightly sessions in which participants were introduced to a set of related ideas based upon psychological theory that might impact their experiences of 'luck' (that is events that happen to us that are seemingly brought about by chance or other factors beyond our control). The reason I mention it here is that the GLY! project involved an online element, so that participants could take part without having to attend sessions at the university and could participate fully online. Or they might choose to attend some sessions in person and some online. This was made possible by my filming the sessions I was running at lunchtimes on campus (using Swivl and an iPAD or iPhone), and posting these on a specially constructed Blackboard organisation for which I gave participants guest usernames. I have included these materials in my PGCert submission (itself a Bb organisation) to give an idea of how these materials looked and how they were presented to participants. An example of one of the recordings (the first of three parts that comprised session 1) is embedded below:
At the beginning of the project, prior to the first session, participants were asked to complete some online assessments (via PsychData.com, a secure service that allows online surveys and other psychoological assessments) and then complete the same assessments at the end of the project, up to 2 weeks after the final (sixth) session. They were also asked to keep a 'Luck Journal' throughout the 12 weeks of the project to record their experiences of luck (both good and bad!) during this time, along with any other thoughts about the GLY! project and luck in general. They could do this as a hard copy journal (and were provided with a book for this) or they could post their journal directly on Blackboard using the 'journal' facility on there.
A Twitter account for the project
was also set up to help promote the project and also to support
participants by reminding and encouraging them to view the sessions (if
taking part online) and to remember to keep their Luck Journal. I even created a 'tongue-in-cheek' hashtag #DFYLJ (Don't Forget Your Luck Journal!). Those participants who completed the online assessments at the end of the project and submitted their Luck Journal received a certificate of completion.
I presented some initial findings from the project at the Applied Social Sciences Research Group in March 2015 and will also present as part of the Applied Positive Psychology Symposium in May 2015 (slides are in my PGCert submission Bb organisation, and can also be viewed via issuu.com here).
My reflections here focus on the effectiveness of the online element of the project, specifically how engaged online participants might have been. The long and short of it is that they weren't. Of 66 participants who originally signed up to take part (by completing the online assessments at the beginning of the project) only 14 (21%) completed the assessments at the end of the project (despite several follow-up emails to encourage completion). It was also clear that engagement in the project by those viewing the online materials quickly dwindled as the number of views of the video-recorded sessions reduced after the first couple of sessions.
In essence, I think there were two main reasons for this. The first is that I had originally intended to make the sessions far more interactive than they ended up being. They became more 'instructional' and I was aware that people's time was quite limited. The small number of people who attended in person were doing so in their lunch-break and so I was keen not to take up more than around 30 minutes for each session. Similarly, I was sensitive to the fact that those viewing online wrould be more likely to watch clips that weren't overly long (and I was limited to uploading in 15 minute parts due to YouTube's restrictions).
The second main reason is that I would have liked to given more time to building a 'community' for all participants that the online participants would have felt part of and perhaps supported them through the project. I attempted this a little through the use of a specific GLY! twitter account (@go_luckyourself) and by encouraging use of the discussion boards on Blackboard. But, if I am being honest, these were really a half-hearted attempt to create any sense of community.
I am considering running the project again in some way and looking at ways of making the sessions more interactive and introducing additional ways of supporting participants through a communityor example, maybe framing it as the 'Go Luck Yourself! Challenge' and explicitly asking those taking part to use social media to report on how they're getting on? One other simple change may be to make it a 6 week programme with one session (or 'lesson' or 'step') each week, rather than once per fortnight. Something that might help put it into the routine of participants.
Today is the UN International Day of Happiness. So be happy... If only it were that simple! We know it's not, and the area of psychology that I am most involved in is 'positive psychology' which is dedicated to the scientific study of topics such as happiness, wellbeing, flourishing, and so on.
