A Multiskill,5-Week,Online Positive Emotions Training for Student Well-Being

Abstract

The aim of this 5-week Positive Emotions Project (PEP) is to teach students simple emotional well-being techniques in an online course. I adapted a clinical intervention that Moskowitz et al. developed for chronically ill patients. The adapted training proved to be effective for academic purposes. In this instructional innovation article, I provide detailed instructional materials, and explain how to set up and conduct the training. Students read simple instructions at the start of every week, for 5 consecutive weeks. Each week focuses on one or two new techniques. I collected data and present evidence of effectiveness. A secondary take-away from the study is to use multiskill interventions, since not all the eight techniques taught through PEP were endorsed equally for future use; feeling gratitude, setting attainable goals, acts of kindness, savoring positive events, and self-affirmation were the most popular PEP skills, whereas mindfulness was the least popular.

Keywords

positive emotions multiskill well-being stress reduction online training savoring positive events acts of kindness attainable goals mindfulness gratitude self-affirmation

Both popular press and academic research point to the rising rates of depression and burnout in modern life (Melchior et al., 2007). Various contributing factors, such as more competition, increased workload, 24/7 digital connectivity, sedentary lifestyle, and economic disparity have been discussed (e.g., Ayyagari et al., 2011; Zuboff, 2019). University students face additional stresses, including rising costs of college and student loans, academic stresses, exogenous pressures to succeed, tight job markets, and perils of overreliance on social media, such as fear-of-missing-out or fomo, loneliness and fear of evaluations (Beiter et al., 2015; Elhai et al., 2016; C.-c. Yang, 2016). Business students are among the highest stressed student groups as highlighted by various studies across the globe (Dahlin et al., 2011; Erevik et al., 2018; Kotera et al., 2019; Matthews, 2017; Schofield et al., 2016). One key contributing factor is the culture of business schools. Mirroring the values of efficiency, competition, and long working hours prevalent in the corporate world, business schools inevitably emphasize competition, high workload, toughness, grit, rigor, pressures of constant self-enhancement, and earning high grades (Matthews, 2017; Schofield et al., 2016). Not to mention, business education is expensive, leading to financial stress. Finally, many business students, particularly those earning Masters-level degrees, are usually juggling full-time work, family, and academic demands (Matthews, 2017). These factors take a toll on students, producing negative outcomes, such as depression, harmful alcohol use, and high dropout rates (Dahlin et al., 2011; Erevik et al., 2018; Schofield et al., 2016).

While researchers expound the antecedents and outcomes of well-being, and management faculty introduce students to various well-being concepts, it is equally important to take concrete steps to increase student well-being in real time. In-class training interventions might be one way to teach students practical skills that they can employ right away to enhance their well-being. Over the past 20 years, research on well-being interventions has accumulated in management journals. These interventions consist of either organization-level initiatives (e.g., company health programs, workplace stress reduction committees, or “no email on weekends” policies), or individual-level interventions, such as training programs, counseling and therapy, and health promotion interventions (Graveling et al., 2008). Out of these interventions, the individual training is the most suitable for classroom use.

Individual-level training programs stem from various theoretical traditions and emphasize a wide range of preventive and palliative techniques, including: increasing positive emotions (Moskowitz et al., 2012), practicing relaxation and breathing techniques (Flinchbaugh et al., 2012), mindfulness (Hülsheger et al., 2013) or cognitive–behavioral approaches (Gardner et al., 2005). Particularly in the past decade, mindfulness training has flourished in organizations, creating a lucrative industry with ample media coverage (Bartlett et al., 2019).

In contrast to the intervention research in the mainstream management journals, research on classroom interventions is scant in the management teaching journals. A high-level search showed only one empirical study comparing the effects of two different well-being interventions for students (Flinchbaugh et al., 2012), published in the Journal of Management Education. The search for articles did not reveal any instructional innovation studies. To fill this gap, this instructional innovation article presents a well-being training for management courses. I start by presenting the theoretical rationale for incorporating the well-being training in management education. Next, I discuss the theoretical background for the proposed intervention, followed by the detailed instructions to set up the training and the evidence of effectiveness. I end with implications for management education.

Rationale for Incorporating Well-being Training in Management Courses

Stress is in on the rise globally (Martin et al., 2015), and affects management students in two ways. First, management students have to meet academic demands in a rising stress milieu. Second, management students must prepare to manage employees in a stressful work environment (Stixrud, 2012). This is why employers regard stress management to be one of the most critical skills to have in today’s workplace (Matthews, 2017). Unfortunately, management education lags far behind in preparing students to deal with mental health issues prevalent in workplace (Martin et al., 2015). Recently, AMBA (an international, London-based, accreditation body for business schools) called for stress management to become a core component of all MBA programs (Matthews, 2017). Given these trends, management educators are expected to take a leadership role in imparting the necessary knowledge and skills to students. Classroom well-being training can be particularly instrumental in developing students’ competencies to cope with stress. A recent meta-analysis of college mental health programs showed that supervised training programs (mean effect size = 0.45) are more effective than knowledge-based programs (mean effect size = 0.14) in improving students’ mental health across several types of outcomes, including depression, anxiety, stress, general psychological distress, social–emotional skills, self-perceptions, and academic adjustment (Conley et al., 2015). Thus, we need to incorporate skill-building interventions in our curriculum to make a lasting impact on students’ outcomes.

Incorporating practical ways to enhance well-being skills in management curricula is essential for several reasons. First, teaching students well-being skills directly improves their psychological state, so they can focus on their academic goals. Many studies across the world show students’ stress and anxiety levels have doubled in the past 10 years, which is also increasing their dropout rates (Conley et al., 2015; Matthews, 2017). Emotional and psychological distress, in the form of anxiety, depression, loneliness, and helplessness, are commonly experienced by university students (American College Health Association, 2019). Thus, academics need to focus on educational tools that can directly improve students’ well-being. The proposed positive emotions training aims to build students’ adaptive skills so they can meet their academic challenges and maximize their learning. Many scholars have indicated the negative impact of stress on students’ learning (Conley et al., 2015), particularly for younger college students, for whom stress can weaken the development of brain executive functions (Stixrud, 2012). Similarly, for graduate business students who return to college after several years of experience and are juggling many roles, the pressure to succeed in a well-accomplished peer group is enormous (Matthews, 2017). Incorporating skill-building interventions in the classroom can teach essential adaptive skills to students to facilitate their academic success.

Second, well-being training programs are effective in building students’ adaptive socioemotional competencies that are essential for long-term personal and professional success (Conley et al., 2015; Dvořáková et al., 2017). Studies have shown that mental health problems can lead to poor job performance, absenteeism, employee turnover, and poor organizational outcomes (Kessler et al., 2008; Martin et al., 2015; Shann et al., 2014). Both episodic and chronic stress can impede executive functioning, lead to poor decision making, lack of motivation, and workplace mistreatment, all of which are costly for organizations (Stixrud, 2012; L.-Q. Yang et al., 2014). It is estimated that one in four adults has a diagnosable mental disorder (Kessler et al., 2008; Lim et al., 2008). These estimates suggest a prevalence of mental health issues in the workplace, and highlight the need for developing life-long socioemotional competencies in management students to adapt to work demands.

Third, management students are preparing to assume leadership roles, in which they will be expected to motivate employees in demanding jobs with rising stress levels. In a recent study of 700 HR managers and functional managers, about 70% of functional managers reported managing an employee suffering from depression (Shann et al., 2014). In this milieu, the socioemotional competencies are not only critical for self-regulation of stress but also for creating a work culture that is challenging but not overwhelming for employees (Stixrud, 2012). The proposed in-class well-being training provides students an opportunity to build these leadership skills. In addition, classroom training can decrease the social barriers in discussing mental health topics, and encourage students to seek help in the future.

Finally, and related to the above point, due to negative social attitudes toward mental health issues, students in general (Conley et al., 2015), and business students in particular (Matthews, 2017), avoid seeking traditional mental health and counseling services provided by the universities. The characteristic competitiveness and veneration of strength in the corporate world and in business schools further discourage business students from acknowledging their mental health issues. Seeking help is often seen as a sign of weakness (Matthews, 2017), which unfortunately stops many business students from getting much needed help, and further perpetuates their mental health issues. Consequently, these students silently suffer, allowing unaddressed stress to precipitate poor academic performance, program dropouts, loss of self-confidence, and long-term disillusionment and depression (Stixrud, 2012). Introducing in-class training interventions can provide some respite to students overwhelmed with anxiety and distress. In addition, classroom training may provide legitimacy to mental health interventions, and may promote a mindset where seeking help is normal. This may not only encourage learning effective self-care strategies but may also inspire students to create a supportive organizational culture that prioritizes employee well-being.

Theoretical Background of Positive Emotions Project (PEP)

Emotional well-being and mental health predict important life outcomes, such as academic success, economic success, quality of relationships, physical health (Diener et al., 2002), and work outcomes, such as job performance, engagement, and company profitability (Guest, 2002). Various definitions and operationalizations of well-being abound in literature (Diener et al., 2002). Overall, three major aspects of well-being emerge from literature (Steptoe et al., 2015): evaluative well-being (or life satisfaction), hedonic well-being (feelings of happiness, sadness, anger, stress, and pain), and eudemonic well-being (sense of purpose and meaning in life). Generally, well-being is measured by various simple indices, such as life satisfaction, job satisfaction, positive and negative affect, depression, and stress (Rothmann, 2008). More conceptually-rich measures also exist, such as the 20-item scale proposed by Ryff (1989) that taps into six-theoretical dimensions of well-being: self-acceptance, autonomy, positive relations with others, environmental mastery, purpose in life, and personal growth. In sum, we can draw on a wide base of theories to define, measure, and improve well-being.

Starting with Fordyce (1977), psychologists have designed various interventions to improve well-being. My objective was to identify a hands-on exercise that management instructors can incorporate easily in their courses to teach students simple and effective well-being skills. My secondary consideration was to identify a method that is suitable for an online learning environment. In the past decade, given mounting public demand and state mandates, a majority of accredited business schools in the United States have started offering online courses (Arbaugh, 2018). The recent COVID-19 pandemic has further precipitated the transformation of university instructions to online platforms. Accordingly, management faculty are in constant search for high-quality projects that can positively engage students and enhance their learning outcomes in online classes. To sum, I aimed to identify an experiential project that meets the following criteria: (1) provides simple and actionable well-being strategies, (2) can be delivered online, (3) does not require face-to-face interactions with a trainer to clarify concepts, and (4) enables students to practice the skills for several weeks to ensure knowledge transfer, as recommended by a recent meta-analysis of well-being interventions (Sin & Lyubomirsky, 2009).

Many successful well-being interventions stem from positive emotions research (Fredrickson, 1998). Recent research in the field of affective neuroscience (Davidson & Begley, 2012; Davidson & McEwen, 2012) affirms the claims of positive psychology, and lends support to the adaptive role of positive emotions (Folkman & Moskowitz, 2000). One’s ability to feel and sustain positive emotions during stressful events is an important component of well-being (Fredrickson, 2001). Positive emotions during stressful events have an adaptive function (Ong et al., 2006), as positive emotions broaden attentional focus beyond immediate problems and expand the behavioral repertoire, which in turn helps in building psychological, physical, and social resources to deal with adversity (Fredrickson, 1998, 2001). Similarly, evidence from affective neuroscience shows that positive emotions increase resilience and well-being (Davidson & McEwen, 2012; Schaefer et al., 2018).

Moskowitz et al. (2012) conducted an extensive search of positive affect training literature to identify various skills proven to improve mental health. According to a meta-analysis of well-being interventions, multiskill interventions are more effective than single skill programs, and individual training is better than group programs (Sin & Lyubomirsky, 2009). Accordingly, Moskowitz et al. (2012) designed a multiskill training intervention for individual patients for both face-to-face (Moskowitz et al., 2014) and online settings (Cohn et al., 2014). The positive emotions intervention primarily focuses on improving one’s hedonic sense of well-being. However, given the high association between different types of well-being (Gallagher et al., 2009), ultimately the positive emotions intervention enhances one’s overall sense of well-being (Moskowitz et al., 2017).

In sum, Moskowitz et al.’s (2012) program satisfied the 4-point selection criteria I outlined earlier. Therefore, I decided to adapt the clinical intervention, and test its effectiveness in my online course. As the original intervention (Cohn et al., 2014; Moskowitz et al., 2014; Moskowitz et al., 2012) was intended for patients who were compensated to complete the training, it was necessary to test whether the intervention would be effective for a nonclinical sample. In particular, I wanted to explore whether the intervention would be effective for increasing students’ emotional well-being, and whether students would be willing to complete daily journals for 5 weeks, and successfully implement the skills taught in an online course.

Overview of PEP and the Learning Objectives

I incorporated this training exercise in my undergraduate organizational behavior course, which is a required course for all management majors. The key course objectives are to teach students the concepts related to self-management, motivation, teamwork, and leadership in the workplace. PEP capitalized on synergies among cognitive, affective, and behavioral aspects of learning to facilitate acquisition of both conceptual and practical knowledge (Brownell & Jameson, 2004). The cognitive objectives of PEP included learning the key concepts of well-being, stress regulation, emotion regulation, and the theoretical basis of the training intervention. The affective objectives of PEP were to enhance student well-being by decreasing their negative emotions and felt stress, and increasing their positive emotions. The behavioral objective was to engage students in daily skill-practice activities that teach them how to approach daily routines more positively, and build their adaptive skills.

The modified PEP training focused on eight well-being skills: noticing and capitalizing on positive events, gratitude; formal mindfulness, informal mindfulness, positive reappraisal, recognizing personal strengths, setting attainable goals, and performing acts of kindness. Students practiced these skills over the course of 5 weeks. Each week students read about one or more skills, performed assigned tasks related to these skills, and reported on their progress in a daily online journal provided by the instructor. The weekly topics are listed in Appendix 1 and detailed definitions of these skills are provided in Appendix 4. Next, I describe in detail how to set up (Step 1) and implement (Step 2) PEP in an online course.

Step 1: Setting Up the Exercise

The initial set-up of PEP requires focusing on four major tasks: (1) providing students an overview of the PEP exercise, (2) setting up weekly instructions, (3) setting up online journals, and (4) deciding the grading criteria. All the instructional materials needed for setting up PEP are provided in this article. With the help of these materials, instructors can easily upload the project overview, create the daily online journals for 5 weeks, and post daily task instructions on their learning platforms.

Providing Students an Overview of PEP Exercise

Instructors should create an overview module on the learning platform, and therein provide project goals, introductory conceptual readings, overview of tasks, and a comprehensive quiz. Students can be overwhelmed with the prospect of working daily on a project for several weeks in an online learning environment. This is why it is important to clearly outline the tasks, communicate expectations, and provide a roadmap. In a typical semester long class, instructors can assign the first few weeks for reading the introductory material. The actual exercise runs for 5 consecutive weeks. Instructors can require students to write a reflection paper at the end of the project. Instructors should schedule in advance the consecutive weeks in which students will be learning and practicing the skills, and clearly mark these weeks in the syllabus.

I create a separate section labeled “Overview of Positive Emotion Project” in the table of contents in the online learning system. In this overview section, I discuss learning goals, explain why the project spans multiple weeks, summarize weekly topics, list keys tasks, and clearly outline the deliverables (Appendix 1). In the learning goals, I emphasize the managerial significance of the project. Business students are pragmatic and are motivated to learn skills that can enhance their leadership skills. I also explain why multiple skills will be practiced. I motivate students to practice all the skills, so they can identify at least one or two skills that they find useful by the end of the project. I also assign a brief reading that discusses the scientific background of the project (Appendix 2). In addition, students have to complete a quiz before they can start working on the weekly tasks (Appendix 3). This is to ensure students have read all the introductory material, and understand the project requirements before they start the training.

Setting up Weekly Instructions

The actual training runs for 5 weeks, and instructors should set up these weekly instructions in advance. If you organize your online course around weeks, then each week should have a clearly labeled weekly PEP subsection. For those who organize their courses around topics, all PEP-related topics (including the overview) should be part of a separate section, with clearly labeled weekly subsections. In the weekly subsection, introduce and explain the focal skills for that week, provide clear instructions of the assigned tasks, and insert links for the daily journals for that week. In Appendix 4, I provide in detail the weekly training materials I have developed and used. The training content is adapted from the clinical version of the exercise (Moskowitz et al., 2012).

Setting up Online Journals

Instructors should provide daily journals for students to complete. Please see Appendix 4 for the weekly questions to be included in these journals. Setting up these journals is probably the most laborious step of the project. However, once these are developed, most learning platforms will allow import to other courses. Instead of a learning platform, instructors may also develop daily journals on an online survey platform, such as Qualtrics. However, I strongly recommend using the quiz feature of a learning platform, for the ease of tracking daily journal completions, providing feedback, promptly grading the daily journals, and documentation. I set up six identical quizzes for each week with clear deadlines. For all daily journals, I keep a uniform timeframe for completion: 10 a.m. to 5 a.m. next day. The starting time of 10 am is to ensure students have some time to practice and implement the skills. The deadline of 5 a.m., next day, is to accommodate students who work late hours and may access the journal late at night.

Grading Criteria

Instructors should carefully think about the grading scheme for the project. The project requires sustained motivation from students to make daily entries. Particularly in the beginning, students might be skeptical about the project and may perceive it to be burdensome. I recommend assigning PEP at least 10% to 15% of the final grade. Furthermore, I recommend the following scheme for grading PEP: Overview and quiz (15% of PEP grade); daily journals (70% of PEP grade), and a 1,000 words reflection paper (15% of PEP grade).

Instructors should also carefully reflect on the weekly journal requirements. Ideally, students should practice and complete journals every day. However, I recommend providing some flexibility to give students a sense of control. I provide six online journals each week, and students must complete at least three journals to receive full credit for that week. In addition, I state that students who complete more than three journals for at least 3 weeks will receive bonus points. Finally, the instructor should communicate clearly and frequently that the quality of the journals should demonstrate that students understood and practiced the skills correctly. In my experience, grading the quality of journals motivates students to read instructions carefully, and take the tasks seriously.

Step 2: Run the Project

Once the project is set up, PEP is easy to run and can be easily imported to the subsequent courses. The instructor is required to do the following tasks during the semester.

Remind students to review the introductory material and take the PEP quiz, by sending an email at the start of the semester.

Send an overview email (or post weekly announcements on the course home page) at the start of each training week, to remind students of the weekly topic and the key tasks.

In my experience, promptly grading the first two journals at the start of each week is essential for effective training. I provide individual feedback to the students if I notice they misunderstood a skill, or wrote a poor-quality journal. This ensures students effectively practice the skills for the remainder of the week. If I notice a common mistake across several students, I write a general email to the class clarifying the concept. Prompt grading also reassures students that the instructor is noticing their progress.

At the end of 5 weeks, remind students to write the reflection paper.

Grade the reflection papers, and assign the overall project grade.

Send a summary email to students, highlighting key themes from the reflection papers, and encourage them to continue practicing the skills they learned.

Challenges of Conducting PEP

I have been able to run this project successfully several times. Overall, I have received positive feedback from students. Although rewarding, PEP might pose some challenges to instructors. First, setting up the project might be time consuming for the first time. I hope that the instructional materials I provide facilitate this process. Nonetheless, instructors might find setting up deadlines for thirty quizzes (six quizzes for five weeks) to be time consuming. I would recommend using the bulk-date feature provided in most learning platforms. The second challenge is the time commitment required to review and grade the daily journals, especially in large sections. It is important to note that daily journals are brief, and the grading may take about 3 to 5 minutes per student, even when the instructor has to compose a brief feedback. In addition, the flexibility to complete any three out of six journals reduces the number of daily journals to be graded. On average, students completed four journals per week. Nonetheless, without teaching assistants, grading daily journals might be challenging for class sizes above 40 students.

Another point to keep in mind is the importance of prompt feedback at the start of the week. If an instructor notices a common theme across students, proactively sending a general feedback to the entire class in the early part of the week vastly improves the quality of students’ responses. In my experience, the skills that generally required more feedback were “savoring positive events” and “informal mindfulness.” For savoring positive events, the common mistake was to just notice the event but not amplify it. Therefore, in the feedback I had to remind students of the need to amplify the event by telling a friend, thinking about it several times, or writing elaborate details in the journals. For informal mindfulness, I had to explain to students that planning for future tasks or reflecting about the past does not qualify as informal mindfulness, no matter how carefully they deliberate. The point is to focus on the present.

One challenge can be to instill tasks seriousness in students. Thus, it is important to set up the project instructions carefully, provide students flexibility to complete three of six journals per week, and select grading criteria carefully. In my experience, the majority of students appeared to complete the assigned tasks successfully. If any student was not able to complete an activity (e.g., mindfulness), she or he was forthright about it, and reported in the journal why they did not complete a certain activity. Reasons generally included being too busy at work, too many assignments due for other classes, or a personal engagement. Overall, students showed willingness to complete the project requirements, and none of the students complained about the workload or complexity of the project. I provide some ideas on variations of the exercise in Appendix 5.

Evidence of Effectiveness

To investigate the effectiveness of PEP, I used both quantitative and qualitative data collected from four sections of an undergraduate Organizational Behavior course that I taught over two consecutive semesters. Each semester, I had one control and one treatment group. All sections had similar class sizes, course content, and grading criteria. The only difference in the course content was that the treatment groups completed the PEP project for 15% of the final grade, whereas the control groups had a semester project for 15% of their grades. Students in all sections completed preintervention and postintervention surveys. The treatment group consisted of 57 students enrolled in the two sections offering the PEP training. The control sections had 63 students, of which only 41 completed both surveys.

In terms of student demographics, 56% of the sample were females, predominantly White, and in their senior college year. These statistics represent the typical composition of an organizational behavior class in my college, where undergraduate business students work on average 15 hours per week, have an average American College Test score of 24, and an average 3.3 college GPA score.

Quantitative Evidence

I examined the data to see whether the cognitive, affective, and behavioral objectives of PEP were met. In terms of cognitive objectives, the students in the treatment group scored an average of 85% on all the questions related to the PEP in the final examination and the quiz, showing a good grasp of concepts. To understand the affective and behavioral outcomes of PEP, I examined the presurvey and postsurvey results. In line with the extant studies (Rothmann, 2008), I measured hedonic aspects of well-being, such as affect and stress, in both presurveys and postsurveys. More specifically, positive and negative affect were measured with a modified Differential Emotions Scale used in positive emotion studies (e.g., Moskowitz et al., 2012). Participants rated on a 5-point Likert-type scale (1 = never ; 5 = all the time) how often they had experienced five positive (hope, interest, joy, love, and thankful), seven negative (anger, stress, disdain, disgust, fear, hopeless, and sadness), and two other emotions (sympathy and surprise) in the past 2 to 3 weeks. I aggregated the ratings on the positive (Time 1 α = .83; Time 2 α = .84) and negative (Time 1 α = .83; Time 2 α = .82) emotions. Perceived stress was measured with a 10-item scale (Cohen, 1988); participants indicated how often (1 = never to 5 = very often) during the past month they had experienced thoughts and feelings, such as “being upset because of something that happened unexpectedly” (Time 1 α = .93; Time 2 α = .92).

To test the affective learning outcomes, I examined whether the training increased students’ hedonic well-being. I regressed each dependent variable at Time 2 on the treatment group, while controlling for Time 1 values. I controlled for Time 1 values, as it was not possible to randomly assign students to each group, rather I had to assign all students in a class to either a treatment or control group. Initial analyses controlled for gender but it was insignificant; therefore, I report the analyses without gender. Table 1 shows descriptive statistics.

Table 1.

Descriptive Statistics.

Variables	Treatment group			Control group
Variables	N	M	SD	N	M	SD
Gender	57	0.56	0.50	63	0.30	0.46
Negative Emotions (Time 1)	55	16.44	4.32	54	15.00	4.28
Perceived Stress (Time 1)	55	25.24	8.44	54	23.56	7.97
Positive Emotions (Time 1)	55	20.83	4.80	54	17.02	3.63
Sympathy (Time 1)	54	3.04	1.08	54	2.72	1.00
Negative Emotions (Time 2)	55	14.22	3.68	48	16.21	5.07
Perceived Stress (Time 2)	55	21.84	7.22	48	25.31	8.25
Positive Emotions (Time 2)	55	21.47	4.97	48	16.83	4.20
Sympathy (Time 2)	55	3.36	1.06	48	2.69	1.03
PEP journal scores	57	37.82	9.93
Perceived PEP value	54	4.15	0.86
Total skills to use in future	54	4.50	1.83

Note. Gender is coded as male = 0 and female = 1.

The overall analysis of covariance models in Table 2 show that students in the treatment group had superior hedonic well-being than the control group. As shown in Table 3, the analysis revealed a significant treatment effect for negative emotions (β = −.28, p <.01, ΔR² = .08), positive emotions (β = .25, p <.01, ΔR² = .05), felt stress (β = −.26, p <.01, ΔR² = .07), and sympathy (β = .29, p <.01, ΔR² = .08). Figures 1 to 3 show an improvement in positive affect and a decrease in negative affect and stress for the PEP group, over the period of the training. No such benefits were observed for the control group. Table 4 shows adjusted mean differences by controlling for Time 1 levels, since students were not randomly assigned to each group. The adjusted mean differences are significant and in the predicted direction.

Table 2.

Analysis of Variance for ANCOVA Models of Well-Being.

	Model df	Error df	F	p	Adjusted R²
Model 1: Negative Emotions	2	91	20.22	<.0001	.29
Model 2: Perceived Stress	2	91	32.21	<.0001	.40
Model 3: Positive Emotions	2	91	59.20	<.0001	.56
Model 3: Sympathy	2	90	10.95	<.0001	.18

Note. Model 1: Negative Emotions 2 = intercept + b1 × Negative Emotions 1 + b2 × Group; Model 2: Perceived Stress 2 = intercept + b1 × Perceived Stress 2 + b2 × Group; Model 3: Positive Emotions 2 = intercept + b1 × Positive Emotions 1 + b2 × Group; Model 4: Sympathy2 = intercept + b1 × Sympathy 1 + b2 × Group. ANCOVA = analysis of covariance; df = degrees of freedom.

Table 3.

Parameter Estimates for the Analysis of Covariance Models.

	b	SE	t	p	β	ΔR²
Model 1: Negative Emotions
Intercept	7.95	1.46	5.46	<.0001	.00
Negative Emotions 1	0.54	0.09	5.98	<.0001	.53	.23
Control	−2.51	0.79	−3.17	.00	−.28	.08
Model 2: Perceived Stress
Intercept	11.20	2.06	5.43	<.0001	.00
Perceived Stress 1	0.59	0.08	7.60	<.0001	.61	.35
Control	−4.24	1.30	-3.27	.00	−.26	.07
Model 3: Positive Emotions
Intercept	4.73	1.53	3.10	.00	.00
Positive Emotions 1	0.69	0.08	8.21	<.0001	.62	.51
Control	2.66	0.79	3.36	.00	.25	.05
Model 4: Sympathy
Intercept	1.80	0.31	5.80	<.0001	.00
Sympathy 1	0.31	0.10	3.18	.00	.30	.11
Control	0.63	0.21	3.04	.00	.29	.08

Figure 1.

Pre-negative and Post-negative Emotions.

Figure 2.

Pre-perceived and Post-perceived Stress.

Figure 3.

Pre-positive and Post-positive Emotions.

Table 4.

Adjusted Least Square Means at Time 2 for Control and Treatment (PEP) Groups.

	Control	PEP group
Negative Emotions	16.39	13.88
Perceived Stress	25.54	21.30
Positive Emotions	17.87	20.53
Sympathy	2.70	3.33

Note. All differences in adjusted means between control and PEP groups, and control for Time 1 values for that variable. PEP = Positive Emotions Project.

To assess behavioral outcomes, I regularly examined the quality of journals completed by the students. The majority of the students completed the assigned tasks successfully. Each journal was worth two points, and students were expected to complete at least three journals per week. At this rate, students could earn 30 points in 5 weeks. However, two points were only assigned if the quality of journal reflected accurate practice of the skills. On average, the students completed four journals per week; M = 37.9 and SD = 10. This shows the majority of the students exceeded the minimum expectation of 30 points, and successfully made behavioral changes required to build their socioemotional skill repertoire.

In the postsurvey, I also asked students whether they found the PEP project to be valuable. I assured students that the question was for research purposes only, and their answers would not affect their grades. On average students reported PEP to be a valuable project (M = 4.15, SD = 0.86; see Table 1). Finally, I measured the long-term behavioral intentions of students, by asking them to select which of the eight PEP skills they wished to continue using in the future. Feeling gratitude was the most popular skill; 76% students expressed intentions to continue using it in the future. This was followed by setting attainable goals (70%), doing acts of kindness (65%), noticing and savoring positive events (60%), noticing personal strengths (55%), informal mindfulness (46%), and formal mindfulness (32%). On average students indicated using four of the eight skills (M = 4.5, SD = 1.83; see Table 1) in the future, showing benefits of using multiple skills training, so that students can choose what works best for them. Although, I was not able to measure long-term effects of PEP, past research has shown that positive emotions training has lasting beneficial effects. For example, in clinical populations the effects of PEP have shown to last for up to 15 months, and in contrast to most health behavior interventions, the effects from positive emotions training seem to improve over time (Moskowitz et al., 2017). In short, quantitative evidence from my data showed that PEP was effective in meeting cognitive, affective and behavioral learning goals.

Qualitative Evidence

In the postsurvey, students also shared thoughts regarding why they found PEP to be valuable or not. The following main themes emerged from student comments: the project allowed them to slow down and reflect deeply, it offered a chance to relax and acknowledge the good in one’s life, it helped them develop self-insights and a positive perspective, it increased happiness, reduced stress, made them purposeful, and helped students learn easy and new techniques to manage their well-being. These themes are in line with the broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions which states that positive affect builds capacity and resources for well-being (Fredrickson, 2001). I provide sample comments reflecting these themes in Table 5.

Table 5.

Sample Students Comments About Value of PEP.

Themes	Comments
Reflection, realizing good in life, feeling positive, relaxing	“It helped me take a daily log of my life and realize the good things that I have going for me. It really felt good to recognize and reflect over these things.”
Reflection, slow down, think deep, realizing good in life, purposeful	“I was able to document and reflect on some things that happened throughout my day/week. It allowed me to take time, go back, and think about some events that occurred, and it helped to look deeper into what happened. It allowed me to look back and see what I was grateful for, and also set some goals.”
Slow down, feeling positive, relaxing	“It helped me slow down every day, think into things more, and made me feel a little better each day. It was relaxing.”
Feeling positive, easy skills	“The PEP project was useful in dealing with stress as it helped me improve my mood positively whenever I employed any of the eight skills. All of the skills were easy to do, and made an improvement.”
Reflection, think deep, purposeful, self-awareness	“I loved this project. I looked forward to journaling every night and getting the thoughts off my chest that I really didn’t even know I had until I sat down and thought about it. These journals made me dive deeper into myself and I think I learned a lot about myself and who I want to be. Thank you for assigning this project!”
Self-awareness, purposeful	“The PEP project helped me out a lot during the semester. I was able to recenter myself, and evaluate how I was handling my life, in general. The PEP project also helped me stay on course for this semester, in which I will be graduating at the end.”
Realizing good in life, feeling positive	“My most valuable learning experience in this course came from the PEP project. At first, I was not looking forward to doing so many journal entries each week, but by the end of the project I found that I was making small changes on a daily basis for this project. It helped me be more grateful for the things in my life and think differently about certain events. I may even continue to do similar reflections each day in a less formal manner.”
Already known skills , reduce stress, good refresher of known skills	“Many of these skills were things I’ve learned in previous classes but forgot about or wasn’t practicing. The PEP project was a good reminder and helpful during these last few weeks of the semester to deal with the stress of finals and papers.”
Could not get optimal results for lack of effort	“I felt that is was useful when I put the time into really doing the exercise at hand. There were a couple of times that I blew through it and didn’t get the most out of it so it didn’t help me much.”
Valuable skills, realizing good in life, felt a little forced at times	“I thought PEP taught some valuable skills like mindfulness and realizing every day what you are grateful for, but it did seem a little forced sometimes.”
Increased stress	“This project required making daily entries that increased my stress.”
Reduced stress, feel positive, did not make me stress free.	“I think the project helped me deal with stress in some ways because when I did the random act of kindness, it made me feel good and happy and being happy helped me get through the rest of my long days. However, even though I was happy, in the back of my head I still had stress and anxiety from all the things that go on in my life everyday. So, I think it did HELP but I wasn’t able to keep myself stress free.”

Note. Bold and italic words show negative themes.

Five students also made comments regarding what they did not like about the project, such as the stress of making daily journal entries and not being fully stress-free. Overall, the negative comments were sparse, and highlighted the expected challenges of developing and sustaining healthy habits. Instructors should remind students that learning new skills is effortful. At times students may struggle to do all the assigned tasks; however, their persistence is likely to pay off in the form of acquired well-being skills.

Implications for Management Education

The classroom training of positive emotions (PEP) has various implication for management education. First, this project emphasizes the importance of incorporating in-class practical well-being skills for the academic, professional, and personal success of students (Kolb & Kolb, 2005). While conceptual knowledge is important, without incorporating practical components to enhance students’ socioemotional competencies, management students may not deeply experience or fully focus on the importance of self-care and enhancing the well-being of other employees (Vince, 1998).

The in-class well-being focus is particularly important given the emphasis on achievement, strength and toughness in business schools and the corporate world (Matthews, 2017). As an instructor, I was first hesitant to introduce this project in my organizational behavior class. I was unsure how students would react to an exercise that emphasized self-care and subtly implied vulnerability in students. However, after implementing this project, I realized that the majority of students completed the exercise successfully, found the skills to be valuable, and appreciated the opportunity to reflect deeply about their daily lives. By reading their daily online journals, semester after semester, I gained some idea of their daily struggles and challenges, and noticed their earnest search for well-being strategies. This project made me more attuned to the context within which my students aspired to learn. As management educators, we need to find more ways to gain insights into the world our students navigate in their quest for knowledge (Hawk, 2017; Hawk & Lyons, 2008).

Second, the special issue on mental health and well-being at the Journal of Management Education attests the need for addressing the rising mental health issues through management education. More and more reports show how 24/7 digital connectivity and myriad other pressures of modern life have given rise to new social and psychological challenges (Ayyagari et al., 2011; Elhai et al., 2016; Melchior et al., 2007). Particularly, student populations are at risk, due to high pressures to succeed, increased sense of isolation, high uncertainty, and the rising cost of college education (Beiter et al., 2015; Schofield et al., 2016; C.-c. Yang, 2016). Chronic stress and anxiety hinders learning (Stixrud, 2012). Distressed students can only learn if we find ways to validate their concerns and provide them some real-time tools to cope with stress. As management educators, we must model compassion and leadership to create resilience and optimism in our students. Simply directing students to contact university mental health services or teaching theoretical concepts such as Job Satisfaction and Stress Management may not be sufficient to prepare tomorrow’s leaders who can promote well-being in the workplace.

It is important for management students to gain knowledge and first-hand experience of scientifically driven well-being skills. Business students are known to experience high levels of stress and depression compared with other students given the competitiveness of business schools (Dahlin et al., 2011; Schofield et al., 2016). In addition, employers expect business students to have the ability to deal with stressful work demands (Matthews, 2017). Thus, management instructors should introduce well-being topics in the syllabus to help students effectively cope with academic and professional stress. The societal cost of job burnout is not limited to organizational loss of productivity, but it affects all aspects of employees’ lives, including their health and family relationships. Collectively, work stress increases health care expenditures and decreases national prosperity. One study estimates that excessive workplace stress causes around 120,000 deaths annually with nearly $190 billion in health care costs each year (Goh et al., 2016). Management educators should create awareness about the national, organizational, and personal costs of work stress. Incorporating PEP in the syllabus provides a way to not only discuss these issues and introduce well-being theories but also increase students’ adaptive skills. PEP also indicates the need to develop course modules that emphasize self-reflection and deep thinking in management students. Particularly, students commented (Table 5) how they benefitted from daily reflections and deeper thinking, which forced them to slow down and develop self-insights. This is in line with well-being research regarding how reflection and self-insights can increase personal well-being (Ryff, 1989; Sin & Lyubomirsky, 2009). In addition, self-awareness is considered to be an important aspect of leadership development (Goleman, 2017).

Furthermore, PEP demonstrates the merits of educating students about multiple adaptive skills, instead of just promoting the most well-known or marketed techniques. For instance, to my surprise, mindfulness exercises were the least popular among students. This is in contrast to the rise of mindfulness research (e.g., Krägeloh et al., 2019) and the burgeoning industry. Perhaps, mindfulness is not a cup of tea everyone wants to sip. Thus, it is imperative for management instructors to find adaptive techniques that students find practical. Particularly, this study showed that the majority of the undergraduate business students preferred the techniques of gratitude, setting attainable goals, doing acts of kindness, noticing and savoring positive events, and appreciating personal strengths.

At a more philosophic level, PEP urges management educators to find creative ways to make their courses relevant and effective for addressing challenging workplace issues such as, stress, work–life balance, mental health, and compassion, even if it means borrowing techniques and content from other disciplines. As any other management educator, I was aware of the rising stress levels. In 2018, when I came across the training study by Moskowitz et al. (2012) for clinical population, I decided to try this exercise as a class project for my students. We must broaden our search beyond management literature to find more ways to enable our students to take a leadership role in dealing with mental health issues prevalent in the workplace. By incorporating multiple methods to impart well-being skills in our syllabus, and giving due prominence to the mental health issues in a way that goes beyond lecture-based instruction, we send a strong transformational signal. By doing so, we inspire students to exercise compassion and sensibility in self-care and employee supervision. Our curriculum innovation around well-being skills provides validation to the pressures our students are facing, often in isolation, and encourages them to seek and provide necessary support for mental health concerns.

It is incumbent on management educators to provide our students evidence-based scientific tools to become compassionate and effective managers in the complex modern workplace. Ultimately, management education of well-being skills and mental health issues in the workplace should positively influence the culture of organizations in which our students assume leadership roles, and the communities they live in. The 2020 pandemic of COVID-19 highlights the complex challenges managers face in today’s interconnected, complex, and uncertain world. The deadly pandemic was declared a global health emergency by the World Health Organization, and disrupted every imaginable sphere of life by posing unprecedented challenges (Chappel, 2020). To manage the global health crisis, many countries took drastic measures, such as social distancing, shutting down schools and universities, closing restaurants, and canceling public events. In response, public fear, anxieties, economic hardships, and daily disruptions have escalated to inconceivable levels. This crisis highlights the need for developing managers who have the socioemotional competencies to be attuned to their employees’ distress, and know how to prioritize community and compassion over profits in crisis. In conclusion, I hope this adapted online positive emotion intervention (Moskowitz et al., 2012) will assist other scholars and teachers in promoting adaptive skills in students and managers.

Footnotes

Appendix 1

Appendix 2

Appendix 3

Appendix 4

Appendix 5 Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Maria Hamdani

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