Representing the Unseen with “Our Journey”: a Platform to Capture Affective Experiences and Support Emotional Awareness in University-Level Study

Student mental health is a critical issue that institutions are struggling to tackle proactively. The wellbeing of students is largely invisible to institutions unless specific mental health conditions are diagnosed and disclosed. In comparison to the importance placed on academic aspects, the affective experiences of education throughout the study journeys of students are rarely acknowledged. Approaches for students to develop emotional awareness, through which they learn to understand and manage their emotions, are limited. In this article, we describe the design and evaluation of Our Journey, a platform for students to represent their study journeys through describing the events and emotions they experience. The conceptual and user experience design of the platform was derived from participatory activities with students and staff and has been further refined via several physical and online iterations. In this paper, we report findings from an exploratory pilot trial of Our Journey with 54 students studying for a range of qualifications at an online learning institution. Through an analysis of the journeys that the students produced and a post-trial survey, we found that Our Journey can support representations of emotional awareness in relation to study events which prompted students to reflect on important aspects of their study and personal development. The design and use of the platform have also prompted important considerations around how emotion is represented, as well as how the privacy and ownership of these representations of personal experiences can be managed to support students and institutions to potentially benefit from novel tools such as Our Journey.