Student Experiences with the 3M Sessions
At the end of the course, 56 students from the section that received the in-person 3M sessions replied to the survey. Due to this low questionnaire uptake, we discuss student feedback here and aim to better assess student wellbeing in future iterations of the sessions. When asked whether they found the in-class 3M sessions helpful, 55% agreed/strongly agreed, 30% neither agreed nor disagreed, and only 13% disagreed/strongly disagreed. When asked which sessions they found most useful, respondents most frequently mentioned the sessions related to academic skills, especially exam strategies. They also named the specific meditation (session 9) and chair yoga (session 10) sessions as helpful. When students were asked to justify why the sessions were helpful, stress relief/coping strategies was the most prevalent reason.
80% of respondents strongly agreed/agreed with the statement “I often feel stressed about my academic performance.” When asked “how do you handle academic stress?”, approximately 50% of the strategies mentioned were those discussed in the 3M sessions (exercise, meditation, time management, sleep).
Other strategies that students used included social networks and therapy, taking breaks, and screen time. When asked “what are some challenges you face in your academic performance?” the most frequent challenge was time management/ procrastination/ workload. Other challenges that were frequently mentioned included distractions and motivation and anxiety/emotional reasons. Those students who did not seem to find the 3M sessions helpful included reasons such as anxiety/ awkwardness with participating in class and that some topics were ones that they had learned previously in high school or elsewhere.
Several students mentioned that the reminder was worthwhile, and one student stated “It was a good reminder that I need to prioritize my mental health.”
While our results are preliminary, we were encouraged to see that students in the course section that received the in-person 3M sessions (n=355) tended to achieve slightly higher final grades when compared to the course section that only received the online 3M resources (n=146) (72.5±0.7% and 70.2±1.2%, respectively, p=0.085 unpaired T-test). This is likely due to stronger academic performance on coursework through the course (p=0.09) rather than better performance on exams (p>0.4 for lab and final exams), although many factors could have impacted this outcome, and these results need to be validated in a larger cohort.
