Poster Presentation 6th World Congress on Positive Psychology 2019

Positive Psychology Students As Wellbeing Bloggers: Opportunities For Graduate Student Learning (#577)

Adam Gerace 1 , Andrew McClelland 2 , Karena J Burke 1
  1. Central Queensland University, Wayville, SA, Australia
  2. School of Health, Medical and Applied Sciences, Central Queensland University, Bundaberg, QLD, Australia

Student learning benefits from exposure to core course content with opportunities for applying learning through innovative and practical assessment approaches. At the same time, within the positive psychology space, increasingly the public obtains wellbeing and mental health information through online blogs written by experts and non-experts alike. In this presentation, we will discuss a staged assessment utilised in one new unit of Master of Applied Positive Psychology course at CQUniversity to develop students’ ability to communicate and "teach" positive psychology principles and produce evidence-based resources. In a smaller, initial assessment piece, students (n = 15) were required to choose 10 wellbeing topics and to collect and critique resources (e.g. peer-reviewed research articles, websites, videos) pertaining to those topics. Utilising these resources, the major assessment piece required students to develop a series of posts on a blog platform for the public, detailing evidence-based wellbeing interventions and teaching tips for building wellbeing and resilience. Throughout this presentation, examples of student blogs will be showcased, with student feedback and reflections from teaching staff on supports provided to students used to highlights the opportunities and challenges such an innovative approach provides for student learning.