Effectiveness of a Brief Online Mindfulness-Based Intervention for University Students.

A brief online mindfulness-based intervention in an online university course improved attention, academic self-efficacy, and sense of belonging to a community. Four-hundred and eighty-six participants (average age 22.88) were assigned to either an experimental group that received the intervention or a control group that did not. The intervention included breathing meditation, sharing experiences, mini-lectures on mindfulness, and daily practice over 28 consecutive days. Compared to controls, the experimental group showed significant increases in influencing course activities, self-regulation of attention, academic self-efficacy, and self-efficacy in regulating learning. Adherence to practice partially explained the effectiveness.

Study at a glance

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in a dramatic increase in Web-based education, lacking face-to-face student-teacher and student-student interaction, and consequently impairing students' sense of belonging to a community, interoceptive awareness, and academic self-efficacy. This study examined how a brief mindfulness-based intervention in an online university course can be effective in enhancing attention resources, developing a stronger sense of academic self-efficacy, and improving the sense of belonging to a community, which represent critical factors affecting students' participation in online and blended courses. Four-hundred and eighty-six participants (Mage 22.88) completed a battery of measures at pre- and post-treatment. One class (experimental group) participated in a brief online mindfulness-based intervention (42%), whereas the other one (control group) did not take part in the intervention (58%). The intervention included breathing meditation at the beginning of class, sharing of experiences, mini-lectures on mindfulness, and daily practice, and lasted for 28 consecutive days. Participants in the experimental group when compared to controls showed a significant increase in the feeling of influencing the course activities (F = 9.628; p < 0.005), in the self-regulation of attention (F = 19.133; p < 0.001), in academic self-efficacy (F = 9.220; p < 0.005), and, particularly, in their self-efficacy in regulating learning (F = 12.942; p < 0.001). The students' adherence to the assigned practice could partially explain the effectiveness of the intervention. This study offers useful clues about the effectiveness of mindfulness interventions in the classroom in enhancing sense of belonging to a community, attention grounded in bodily sensations, and academic self-efficacy. This study is not preregistered.