Teaching Undergraduate Positive Psychology: An Active Learning Approach Using Student Blogs

Abstract

In just over ten years positive psychology has become a major subfield in psychology. This is reflected in the development of positive psychology courses at many universities and in over a thousand empirical articles published in peer-reviewed journals. Thus far, there is little published research suggesting ways to incorporate active learning techniques into these courses. This article describes the use of student blogs, employing a university blog platform, to teach several interventions in an undergraduate positive psychology course. The authors asked students enrolled in an introductory positive psychology course at a large university to complete three exercises, referred to as Three Good Things (recalling three good things that happened in the last 24 hours), Signature Strengths (using signature strengths in novel ways), and the Gratitude Letter (writing a letter of gratitude to someone who has been a positive influence in one's life), and record their experience in a blog. These exercises have been found to increase happiness and positive emotions. Students made a significantly higher evaluation of the course with blogs than of the same course without blogs. The authors describe how the techniques were assigned and scored, and examine the benefits and challenges of this method.In 1998, the president of the American Psychological Association, Martin E. P. Seligman, reminded psychologists of the largely forgotten mission of psychology -to focus on well-being and the strengths and virtues that allow people to thrive (Compton, 2005). In asking psychology to reorient itself, Seligman, along with colleague Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, had conceived a new subfield for psychology, called positive psychology, which focuses on the empirical study of positive emotions and character strengths (Azar, 2011). Prior to the creation of positive psychology the study of mental illness had been the disproportionate focus of psychology (Azar, 2011).Seldom had a science added a new subfield that was embraced as quickly; Compton (2005) noted that within a few years of its founding, positive psychology had become an influential area of inquiry in psychology. Indeed, this paradigm shift was so rapid that many universities began to offer courses and programs in positive psychology almost immediately. Such a transformation is usually much more gradual, especially at large institutions. This change resulted in the creation of positive psychology centres at several major universities, the addition of over 70 colleges and universities with positive psychology faculty (Penn Positive Psychology Center, 2011), and the development of more than 50 positive research groups at universities all over the world (Seligman, Steen, Park, & Peterson, 2005). The swift development of positive psychology also saw the creation of the Journal of Positive Psychology, devoted to research on optimal human functioning, and the publication of more than 1000 articles related to the field published in peer-reviewed journals between 2000(Azar, 2011. Our institution,...

Positive Education: Innovation in Educational Interventions Based on Positive Psychology

“…Among university students, three studies were found. Bridges et al (2012) described a methodology of intervention among psychology students enrolled in a course in Positive Psychology. Using a university blog platform as a marketing tool, the authors asked the students to complete three exercises, known as Three Good Things (at the end of each day for three weeks, remember three good things that happened); Strengths (using one of the main strengths in a new and different way every day for one week and leave a record of these activities on the blog) and the Gratitude letter (to write a letter of gratitude to someone who has been a positive influence).…”

“…Using a university blog platform as a marketing tool, the authors asked the students to complete three exercises, known as Three Good Things (at the end of each day for three weeks, remember three good things that happened); Strengths (using one of the main strengths in a new and different way every day for one week and leave a record of these activities on the blog) and the Gratitude letter (to write a letter of gratitude to someone who has been a positive influence). As a result of the course evaluation on a seven-point scale, which is required by the university, the students gave a significantly higher assessment of the Positive Psychology course that used the blog, both in the quality of the course and the teacher who administered classes, compared with the previous two semesters without the use of the blog (Bridges et al, 2012).…”

“…Three were directed at college students (Bridges et al, 2012;Place and Talen, 2013;Duan et al, 2014), only two exclusively meant for teachers (Aldenmyr et al, 2012. ) and school leaders (Waters & Stokes, 2015).…”

“…) and school leaders (Waters & Stokes, 2015). In relation to the outlines, it was observed that five were case studies (Aldenmyr, 2012;Baum et al, 2014;Rhodes & Spiers, 2013;White & Waters, 2015;Waters & Stokes, 2015), three presented other qualitative outlines (Bridges et al, 2012;Niehues et al, 2013;Place & Talen, 2013), three with quasiexperimental outline (Duan et al, 2014;Proctor et al;, Tomyn et al, 2015, two studies presented randomization (Leventhal, 2015;Madden et al, 2011) and a longitudinal study (Shoshani & Steinmetz, 2014).…”

Strengths-based positive psychology interventions: a randomized placebo-controlled online trial on long-term effects for a signature strengths- vs. a lesser strengths-intervention

“…However, in a recent study, which only included 50–70 year old German-speaking participants and the same instructions and design as in the Gander et al (2013) study, there were effects for happiness (at all post measures), but for depressive symptoms only for the post-test and the 1 month measure (Proyer et al, 2014). Other studies have found effects for SS-interventions for personal well-being as well as an engaged and pleasurable life (Mitchell et al, 2009), and life satisfaction (Duan et al, 2013; see also Bridges et al, 2012). Furthermore, harmonious passion seems to be a moderator of the effectiveness of the intervention on well-being (Forest et al, 2012), whereas extraversion was identified as a moderator of the interventions’ effects on depressive symptoms (Senf and Liau, 2013).…”