Expressive Writing: A Self-Care Intervention for First Year Undergraduates

Expressive writing, self-criticism, and self-reassurance.

OBJECTIVES Self-criticism and reassurance are important mechanisms for regulating negative emotions but relatively little attention has been paid to interventions aimed at improving them. DESIGN This study explored the use of an expressive writing task to increase self-reassurance and reduce self-criticism using a randomized controlled design. METHOD A total of 46 participants wrote either ...

Designing a computer graphics course for first year undergraduates

We document the challenge of designing a technical computer graphics course for undergraduate students who have taken only a single undergraduate programming course and have not yet had to take any mathematics beyond high school. This course is the introduction to a major in computer graphics within a Bachelor of Science degree. We needed an introduction to the rigour of computer graphics that ...

Preparing Undergraduates for Professional Writing

A Survey of Computer Experience among First Year Female Undergraduates

This paper presents the results of an exploratory survey which was carried out among 406 part time and full time first year students of four undergraduate degree programmes; BA Public and Social Administration (BAPSA), BA Teaching English as a Second Language (BATESL), BA Accounting (BAAC), and BA Information Systems (BAIS) .These students were enrolled on introductory computer modules. The sur...

Stepping back to move forward: Expressive writing promotes self-distancing.

Prior research indicates that expressive writing enhances well-being by leading people to construct meaningful narratives that explain distressing life experiences. But how does expressive writing facilitate meaning-making? We addressed this issue in 2 longitudinal studies by examining whether and how expressive writing promotes self-distancing, a process that facilitates meaning-making. At bas...