A UM Student Facilitated Digital Wellness Conference for K-12 Students and Caregivers

A UM Student Facilitated Digital Wellness Conference for K-12 Students and Caregivers

Academic Year:
2021 - 2022 (June 1, 2021 through May 31, 2022)
Funding Requested:
$5,935.00
Project Dates:
-
Applicant(s):
Overview of the Project:
Prior to COVID, pre-teenagers (age 11-13) primarily developed their independence in their physical school settings, engaging with peers in-person through academic and non-academic spaces. The COVID pandemic changed this developmental norm; remote learning led many pre-teens to be isolated and forced to replace their in-person growth with socializing on digital devices. While it was not uncommon pre-COVID for adolescents to use digital tools, pre-teens engaged in them earlier in their development and more often than did their pre-COVID counterparts. Often, digital communications were the tweens’ only way to socialize with peers. As a result, caregivers were challenged to quickly create digital tool parameters for their children. This rapid adoption was not universally embraced: caregivers struggled with the amount of screen time and number of applications their pre-teens were engaging in. Furthermore, both the tweens and caregivers were often unaware of the implications of what the tweens were and still are doing in their digital world, most critically, mental health. Thus, the need for both to better understand the implications of engaging with digital applications. Further, UM SOE teaching interns are preparing to teach national standards on digital wellness to K-12 students and need clinical experiences working with pre-teens. The UM Digital Wellness Conference will bring together caregivers, pre-teens, UM teaching interns, and experts on digital wellness to engage in active discussion and community building. Participants would spend time on campus discussing their experiences and developing strategies for their personal digital wellness, with activities facilitated by experts and UM teaching interns.
Final Report Fields
Project Objectives:
  1. To bring together UM School of Education (SOE) teaching interns, K12 caregivers, pre-teens, and experts on digital wellness, to deeply engage in small group discussion, build a sustainable community and network around digital wellness.
  2. To provide an authentic forum for SOE teacher intern’s culminating performance in EDU 444: Teaching with Digital Technologies, by giving interns an opportunity to design and facilitate small group discussions with pre-teens around digital wellness.
Project Achievements:

We were able to hold, not one but, two digital wellness symposiums for youth and caregivers!  The first symposium was held in the Spring of 2022, where we had registered 44 participants.  Beyond CRLT, we were able to partner with the UM SOE EDHub, as well as MACUL (Michigan Association for Computer Users in Learning).  We had UM graduate students in the School of Education help design the curriculum and facilitate the Spring symposium and will have continue to work with UM graduate and undergraduate students to support the next symposiums.  The feedback from participants was overwhelmingly positive.  We have attached the feedback from the 44 participants on their experience in the symposium.  Each participant was able to participate in interactive activities, discussions, and even scavenger hunts on digital wellness.  All participants received a care package after the symposium was over.  The first symposium was so successful that we have a 2nd one planned for January 2023.  We are changing a nominal fee so that we can continue to provide this education to youth and their caregivers.  

Continuation:
Absolutely! As mentioned earlier, our next symposium will be in January 2023! And we are starting to connect with K-12 school districts to provide a personalized version for the individual district. We will be charging a nominal fee for future events, so it can continue.
Dissemination:
We are presenting the data and project at the MAME conference in November 2022 and we have an article coming out in School Library Connection. We also hope to share about our experiences with the event at other conferences for parents and educators in 2023!
Advice to your Colleagues:
We found that spending time training facilitators and allowing them to practice the break out sessions really helped to build confidence and make small useful tweaks to the curriculum. We also found that gamifying the experience (with Goosechase) made it much for fun for the middle school youth, and allowed for more open dialogue and community building. We were worried about charging a fee, but charging a small fee did not see to deter anyone from joining us (although we do have a free option as well, and did have one participant who needed the free option).

Source URL: https://crlt.umich.edu/node/127961