A Digital Single-Session Intervention (Project Engage) to Address Fear of Negative Evaluation Among College Students: Pilot Randomized Controlled Trial

Abstract

Background: Increasingly, college science courses are transitioning from a traditional lecture format to active learning because students learn more and fail less frequently when they engage in their learning through activities and discussions in class. Fear of negative evaluation (FNE), defined as a student's sense of dread associated with being unfavorably evaluated while participating in a social situation, discourages undergraduates from participating in small group discussions, whole class discussions, and conversing one-on-one with instructors.

Objective: This study aims to evaluate the acceptability of a novel digital single-session intervention and to assess the feasibility of implementing it in a large enrollment college science course taught in an active learning way.

Methods: To equip undergraduates with skills to cope with FNE and bolster their confidence, clinical psychologists and biology education researchers developed Project Engage, a digital, self-guided single-session intervention for college students. It teaches students strategies for coping with FNE to bolster their confidence. Project Engage provides biologically informed psychoeducation, uses interactive elements for engagement, and helps generate a personalized action plan. We conducted a 2-armed randomized controlled trial to evaluate the acceptability and the preliminary effectiveness of Project Engage compared with an active control condition that provides information on available resources on the college campus.

Results: In a study of 282 upper-level physiology students, participants randomized to complete Project Engage reported a greater increase in overall confidence in engaging in small group discussions (P=.01) and whole class discussions (P<.001), but not in one-on-one interactions with instructors (P=.05), from baseline to immediately after intervention outcomes, compared with participants in an active control condition. Project Engage received a good acceptability rating (1.22 on a scale of -2 to +2) and had a high completion rate (>97%).

Conclusions: This study provides a foundation for a freely available, easily accessible intervention to bolster student confidence for contributing in class.

Trial registration: OSF Registries osf.io/4ca68 http://osf.io/4ca68.

Keywords: active learning; active learning course; college student; fear of negative evaluation; intervention; negative evaluation; pilot randomized controlled trial; science course; single-session intervention.

Figure 1

(A) Snapshot of an interactive page in Project Engage. The graph shows how performance varies with anxiety. The participant can click on the colored zones to learn more about how being in that zone of anxiety would affect their performance. (B) Snapshot of an interactive conversation between the participant (left) and a simulated friend (right). Through this conversation, the participant gets a chance to think about which of the techniques they learned in Project Engage would be appropriate in a given situation.

Figure 2

The flow of participants in the pilot trial.

Figure 3

Violin plot showing experimental group participants’ responses on the Program Feedback Scale. Each violin corresponds to a question in the Program Feedback Scale. Black dots indicate user responses. Solid horizontal red lines indicate the mean values and the dotted red line indicates the acceptability cut-off score of 0.5.

Figure 4

Violin plot showing the total time spent by the Control and Experimental group participants with Project Engage. Outliers indicate participants who completed the survey but did not close the browser tab.