Digital team coaching for workplace communication: longitudinal evaluation of recipients’ perceptions

Purpose The purpose of this study is to describe the implementation of a digital-based team coaching intervention aimed at improving team communication in the workplace through social network visualization. The study examined recipients’ perceptions of the intervention at two time points and assessed the temporal stability of various factors, including the intervention’s integrity, design, transferability, acceptance and the usability of the adopted visualization tool. The moderating role of digital usability was also evaluated. Design/methodology/approach Four team coaching sessions were delivered to 62 participants from seven teams across three departments within a large public health-care organization in Northern Italy. Perceptions of the intervention dimensions were collected after the second and fourth sessions. Findings Results indicated that, at both time points, recipients appreciated the intervention’s integrity and usability more than its design, transferability and acceptance. Furthermore, no significant changes in recipients’ perceptions were observed over time. The transferability of the intervention was significantly associated with its acceptance, but only when the usability of the digital tool was high. Research limitations/implications The study enriches existing literature on digital interventions in group communication by focusing on process dimensions like recipients’ perceptions of various aspects and the implementation process. Furthermore, the study underscores the potential of integrating specific techniques such as sociomapping and coaching within health-care organizations, encouraging more research and development in these areas. Practical implications The study emphasizes the critical role of usability and integrity in digital-based team coaching interventions, suggesting that high-quality, user-friendly tools not only lead to initial effectiveness but also sustain positive impacts over time, while also increasing transferability and acceptance. Originality/value The present study uniquely deploys a longitudinal approach to examine recipients’ perceptions of a digital-based intervention that combines social network visualization and team coaching to enhance team communication

Smartphone-assisted guided self-help cognitive behavioral therapy for young people with distressing voices (SmartVoices): study protocol for a randomized controlled trial.

BACKGROUND The long-standing view that auditory verbal hallucinations (AVH) or hearing voices is a sign of schizophrenia has been challenged by research demonstrating that they lie on a continuum ranging from normal to pathological experience related to distress and need for care. Hearing voices is more prevalent in adolescence than in later life, and hearing voices during adolescence indicates a risk for severe psychopathology, functional impairments, and suicide later in life. While there is increasing evidence for the efficacy of cognitive behavioral therapy for voices (CBTv) in adults with schizophrenia, research on psychological treatments for youth with distressing voices has been scarce. The aim of the current study is to examine the efficacy of CBTv, delivered using smartphone-based Ecological Momentary Assessment Intervention (EMI) in a transdiagnostic sample of youth. METHODS This is a superiority randomized controlled trial comparing 8 weeks of CBTv-based EMI in addition to treatment as usual (TAU) versus TAU only. TAU covers both no treatment and any form of psychiatric/psychological treatment. In the EMI condition, participants will be prompted twice a day to complete an EMA survey, and receive one intervention proposal per assessment. One-hundred fifty-four youth aged 14-25 years with distressing voices will be recruited from psychiatric clinics, local private practices, internet forums, and advertisements in print and social media. Before and after the intervention phase, participants will undergo a 9-day EMA. Single-blinded assessments will be conducted at baseline (T0) and at 3-month (T1) and 6-month (T2) follow-up. The primary outcome is the distress dimension of the Auditory Hallucinations subscale of the Psychotic Symptom Rating Scales at T1. Secondary outcomes include perceived hostile intention, power, and dominance of voices, passive, aggressive, and assertive relating to voices, and negative core beliefs about the self. DISCUSSION Adolescence provides a crucial window of opportunity for early intervention for hearing voices. However, youth are notoriously reluctant help-seekers. This study offers a low-intensity psychological intervention for youth with distressing voices beyond diagnostic boundaries that, using a mobile technology approach, may match the treatment preferences of the generation of "digital natives." TRIAL REGISTRATION German Clinical Trials Register DRKS00026243. Registered on 2 September 2021

Augmented reality for pedestrian evacuation research: Promises and limitations

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Predicting and Interpreting Students Performance using Supervised Learning and Shapley Additive Explanations

abstract: Due to large data resources generated by online educational applications, Educational Data Mining (EDM) has improved learning effects in different ways: Students Visualization, Recommendations for students, Students Modeling, Grouping Students, etc. A lot of programming assignments have the features like automating submissions, examining the test cases to verify the correctness, but limited studies compared different statistical techniques with latest frameworks, and interpreted models in a unified approach. In this thesis, several data mining algorithms have been applied to analyze students’ code assignment submission data from a real classroom study. The goal of this work is to explore and predict students’ performances. Multiple machine learning models and the model accuracy were evaluated based on the Shapley Additive Explanation. The Cross-Validation shows the Gradient Boosting Decision Tree has the best precision 85.93% with average 82.90%. Features like Component grade, Due Date, Submission Times have higher impact than others. Baseline model received lower precision due to lack of non-linear fitting.Dissertation/ThesisMasters Thesis Computer Science 201

Alternating time spent on social interactions and solitude in healthy older adults

Time spent on being with others (social interactions) and being alone (solitude) in day to day life might reflect older adults' agentic regulatory strategies to balance the needs to belong and to conserve energy. Motivated from a joint lifespan psychological and social relationship theoretical perspective, this study examined how time spent on social interactions and solitude alternatively unfolds within individuals in daily life, relating to individual differences in trait-level well-being and fatigue. Over 21 days, a total of 11,172 valid records of social interactions were collected from 118 older adults (aged 65-94 years) in a smartphone-based event-contingent ambulatory assessment study in Switzerland. On average, a social interaction episode lasted 39 min and a solitude episode lasted 5.03 hr. Multilevel models showed that, at the within-person level, a longer-than-usual social interaction preceded and was followed by a longer-than-usual solitude episode. Moderator analyses showed that older adults with higher trait life satisfaction and lower trait fatigue spent even more time in social interactions after longer solitude episodes, amplifying the solitude-then-interaction association. Our findings suggest that whereas social interaction is a means to improve well-being, solitude is also an integral part in older adults' daily life supporting energy recovery

The effectiveness and user experience of a biofeedback intervention program for stress management supported by virtual reality and mobile technology: a randomized controlled study

Background: Heart rate variability biofeedback (HRV-BF) can be used for stress management. Recent feasibility studies suggest that delivering HRV-BF in virtual reality (VR) is associated with better user experience (UX) and might yield more beneficial changes in HRV than two-dimensional screens. The effectiveness of a VR-supported HRV-BF intervention program has, however, not been investigated yet. Methods: In this study, 87 healthy women and men were assigned to a VR-supported HRV-BF intervention (INT; $n=44$) or a wait-list control (WLC; $n=43$) group. The INT came to the lab for four weekly HRV-BF sessions in VR using a head-mounted display. Between lab sessions, participants were asked to perform breathing exercises without biofeedback supported by a mobile application. Stress-related psychological and psychophysiological outcomes were assessed pre- and post-intervention and at a follow-up four weeks after the intervention in both groups. A psychosocial stress test was conducted post-intervention to investigate changes in stress reactivity. UX was assessed after each HRV-BF session in the INT. Results: Analysis revealed that LF increased significantly from pre- to post-, whereas pNN50 increased and chronic stress decreased significantly from pre-intervention to follow-up in the INT compared to the WLC. Anxiety and mental fatigue decreased significantly, while mindfulness and health-related quality of life increased significantly from pre- to post- and from pre-intervention to follow-up in the INT compared to the WLC (all small effects). The two groups did not differ in their stress reactivity post-intervention. As for UX in the INT, the degree of feeling autonomous concerning technology adoption significantly decreased over time. Competence, involvement, and immersion, however, increased significantly from the first to the last HRV-BF session, while hedonic motivation significantly peaked in the second session and then gradually returned to first-session levels. Conclusions: This HRV-BF intervention program, supported by VR and mobile technology, was able to significantly improve stress indicators and stress-related symptoms and achieved good to very good UX. Future studies should control for potential placebo effects and emphasize higher degrees of personalization and adaptability to increase autonomy and, thereby, long-term health and well-being. These findings may serve as a first step towards future HRV-BF applications of cutting-edge, increasingly accessible technologies, such as wearables, VR, and smartphones, in the service of mental health and healthcare

Applicability of Immersive Analytics in Mixed Reality: Usability Study

Nowadays, visual analytics is mainly performed by programming approaches and viewing the results on a desktop monitor. However, due to the capabilities of smart glasses, new user interactions and representation possibilities become possible. This refers especially to 3D visualizations in the medical field, as well as, the industry domain, as valuable depth information can be related to the complex real-world structures and related data, which is also denoted as immersive analytics. However, the applicability of immersive analytics and its drawbacks, especially in the context of mixed reality, are quite unexplored. In order to validate the feasibility of immersive analytics for the aforementioned purposes, we designed and conducted a usability study with 60 participants. More specifically, we evaluated the effects of spatial sounds, performance changes from one analytics task to another, expert status, and compared an immersive analytics approach (i.e., a mixed-reality application) with a desktop-based solution. Participants had to solve several data analytics tasks (outlier’s detection and cluster recognition) with the developed mixed-reality application. Thereby, the performance measures regarding time, errors, and movement patterns were evaluated. The separation into groups (low performer vs. high performer) was performed using a mental rotation pretest. When solving analytic tasks in mixed reality, participants changed their movement patterns in the mixed reality setting significantly, while the use of spatial sounds reduced the handling time significantly, but did not affect the movement patterns. Furthermore, the usage of mixed reality for cluster recognition is significantly faster than the desktop-based solution (i.e., a 2D approach). Moreover, the results obtained with self-developed questionnaires indicate 1) that wearing smart glasses are perceived as a potential stressor and 2) that the utilization of sounds is perceived very differently by the participants. Altogether, industry and researchers should consider immersive analytics as a suitable alternative compared to the traditional approaches