Assessing the Effects of an Undergraduate Mental Health Literacy Course

Grant Recipients

Christine Zaza, Centre for Extended Learning

Gitanjali Shanbhag, Organizational and Human Development

(Project Timeline: May 2021 - April 2022)

Description

  • a new undergraduate course on mental health literacy was launched in 2020. The aim was to enable students in all disciplines the opportunity to earn a credit for learning how to support mental wellness in themselves as well as in others.
  • In this project, we will examine the following:
    • students’ mental health knowledge, stigmatizing attitudes, attitudes toward help-seeking, and perceived resilience, as measured at the beginning and end of the course
    • the extent to which students continue practicing mental wellness behaviours three months after the course
    • responses to a novel assessment approach in which students reflect on their achievement of the course-level learning outcomes and identify their key learnings from the course.

Questions Investigated

  • How do participants’ knowledge of mental health problems, attitudes toward mental illness, and attitudes toward help-seeking change from the beginning of the course to the end of the course?
  • One month after completing AHS 105 Mental Health Literacy, do participants continue to use any of the mental wellness strategies that were practiced and evaluated during the course?
  • What can be learned from a novel final assignment in which students i) directly reflected on and self-assessed their achievement of the course-level learning outcomes, and ii) identified their key learnings from the course?

Dissemination and Impact

  • Gitanjali Shanbhag has shared LITE grant research findings with AHS 105 students during the Spring 2022 term.
  • Christine Zaza has informally shared LITE grant research findings with CEL colleagues who worked on the Mental Health Literacy project funded by eCampus Ontario’s Virtual Learning Strategy.

  • Presented findings from Study #3 at the University of Waterloo Virtual Conference on Student Mental Health.

  • Ryan Yeung (RA) presented our findings related to barriers to help-seeking to the Campus Wellness Student Advisory Committee.

  • Presented findings from all 3 studies at the 13th Annual University of Waterloo Teaching and Learning Conference

  • A manuscript, reporting our findings, has been submitted to the Canadian Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning for June 30, 2022.

Implications

  • This grant has guided revisions to the course and the course assessments. For example, the course author has expanded the sections on stigma and help-seeking, increased the number of interactive components, and has revised some of the assessments.

References

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Zaza, C. & Yeung, R.C. (in press). It’s Time to Bring Mental Health Literacy Education into the Postsecondary Curriculum. Canadian Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning.