Sustaining Student Wellness Through the Development of a Mobile App for Balanced Student Life: The "My Virtue" Project

Abstract

The global COVID-19 pandemic has boosted mental health issues among students worldwide. Many education systems were interrupted due to lockdown and limited business operations hours. Eventually, the pandemic put a halt to the progression toward the fourth sustainable development goal as high cases of depression and anxiety were reported by many institutions, which led to low academic performance and quality. This is due to limited self-service support, such as mobile or web apps provided by the university to the students. Thus, to achieve quality academic, wellness, and moral excellence among students, this study intends to develop a mobile app that would shape a balanced person through humanistic education. This paper will discuss the findings of usability analysis from the "My Virtue" project, which aims to develop and validate a mobile app for students from an international university. A total of 120 students participated in the pilot study, in which they were given opportunities to view and provide feedback based on the mobile app mock-up. The mock-up was designed based on the findings from a literature review. The mobile app is intended to record and evaluate students' performance in their education, physical, emotional, social, and nutrition. According to the data analysis and findings, the degree of agreement of students towards the usability of the mobile app features is high. This is in line with students' agreements on mobile app ability to promote balanced graduates and humanistic education. These results indicate that the "My Virtue" mobile app has the potential to improve students' wellness and humanistic qualities to achieve a balance student life. However, this study might be confirmed by the project's next stage, which focuses on validating the effectiveness of improving students' wellness and achievements.