Exploring Early Adolescents' Problem-Focused Strategies for Coping With Stressful IT Use Experiences
In today’s technology-oriented world, individuals’ ability to cope with information technology (IT) has become increasingly important. This is especially relevant for early adolescents, who are expected to use IT from an early age on as part of their everyday lives. Although early adolescents’ IT use and its outcomes have been studied, their related coping strategies have received less attention. The current study focuses on early adolescents’ problem-focused strategies used to cope with stressful IT use experiences. The underlying data consist of semistructured interviews with 31 early adolescents. The results show that the strategies used by early adolescents differ in terms of their perv…
Ikäsidonnaisen kognitiivisen heikentymisen vaikutus käyttäjäkokemukseen
Tämä kandidaatintutkielma käsittelee kirjallisuuskatsauksen muodossa niitä ikäsidonnaisia kognitiivisia muutoksia, jotka vaikuttavat käyttäjäkokemuksen muodostumiseen. Myös ikäsidonnaisen kognitiivisen heikentymisen vaikutuk-sia lieventävät käyttöliittymäsuunnittelun keinot on nostettu esille. Huomion-arvoisia ikäsidonnaisia muutoksia käyttäjäkokemuksen näkökulmasta tapahtuu avaruudellisen hahmotuskyvyn, joustavan älykkyyden sekä työmuistin ja pro-sessointinopeuden heikentyessä. Lisäksi tarkkaavaisuuden häirittävyys, mie-lensisäisten mallien epätarkkuus ja automatisoituneen vasteen muodostamisen vaikeudet liittyvät kiinteästi ikääntymiseen. Ikäsidonnaisen kognitiivisen hei-kentymisen myötä …
Children’s conceptions of mental well-being and ideas for its promotion through digital environments
The aim of this study is to further understanding of children’s conceptions of mental well-being and their ideas for its digital promotion. The study is based on the need to provide children an opportunity to actively participate and share their understanding of mental well-being promotion with others in light of their understanding of what online environments and their design can afford for this promotion. The study was implemented as three subsequent workshops in primary school classrooms comprising four teachers and 79 children aged 9-11 years old. In the first two workshops, children reflected on mental well-being, digital environments they utilise and their possible connections to ment…
Schools Went Online Over One Weekend – Opportunities and Challenges for Online Education Related to the COVID-19 Crisis
This study aims to further the understanding of the opportunities and challenges for online education from the perspective of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak. The situation was unique in many ways, as the migration from traditional to online education was very rapid and forced by situational circumstances. However, it also had the potential to foster organizational change in the use of online education in a way that has never been seen before. A literature review was used to explore the opportunities and challenges for online education, and the results are discussed in connection with the COVID-19 crisis. The study identified nine opportunities and nine challenges for online edu…
Digital Mental Health Resources for Children and Youth : Evaluation of Strengths in User Interface Design
The aim of this research is to explore the positive user interface (UI) design of digital mental health resources for children and youth. For this purpose, a heuristic model is introduced and heuristic evaluation is used as a method to systematically assess 49 digital mental health resources. In the assessment, the resources are evaluated by observing the prevalence of UI design strengths defined in the heuristic model. The results of the study indicate that the resources analyzed have strengths especially in the dimensions of visual design, content, reliability, engagement and functional design. Furthermore, all of the resources have at least four design strengths, creating a good basis fo…
Towards a scenario of virtual mental health environments for school-aged children
This study explores student teachers’ future design scenarios focusing on promoting children’s mental health literacy through virtual reality (VR) environments. VR use is on the verge of many breakthroughs in several areas of lived experience. One such area pertains to educational contexts. Student teachers were chosen as the subjects of this study due to the likelihood that they will be the primary users and disseminators of these emerging technologies in educational contexts. The students created five types of future scenarios that contained different environments and activity modes, including those that are still not yet feasible to realize with current technological capabilities. The ai…
Exploring early adolescents’ stressful IT use experiences
Early adolescents are accustomed to using information technology (IT) for different purposes as a part of their everyday life. While IT use can provide many benefits, it can also include negative experiences, such as feelings of stress (i.e. technostress). Considering that young IT users’ technostress perspectives have remained limited in the literature, this paper attempts to contrast their experiences with aspects from earlier research. A qualitative content analysis of semi-structured interviews with 31 primary and secondary school students reveals that early adolescents have encountered stressful IT use experiences that vary based on the degree of stress. The experiences relate to diffe…
The role of information technology in the well-being of young people in school and leisure contexts: perspectives from IT use and design
Informaatioteknologiasta (IT) ja sen sovelluksista on tullut kiinteä osa nykyaikaista yhteiskuntaa. IT:n käytön mahdollisista vaikutuksista yhteiskunnan eri aloilla on keskusteltu laajasti, pitäen sisälleen myönteiset ja kielteiset vaikutuksen yksilöiden hyvinvointiin. Alle 18-vuotiaiden nuorten kohdalla IT:n parissa päivittäin vietetty aika on saanut erityisen paljon huomiota kirjallisuudessa. Nuorten stressaavat IT:n käyttökokemukset, selviytymiskeinot ja hyvinvointi sekä online-opetus ja kouluelämä muodostavat kuitenkin monitahoisia kokonaisuuksia, joihin liittyvä ymmärrys on rajallista. Tämä väitöskirja pyrkii lisäämään tietämystä IT:n käytön yhteyksistä nuorten hyvinvointiin. Väitöskir…