Revista Argentina de Clínica Psicológica 2020, Vol. XXIX, N°1, 1386-1392
DOI: 10.24205/03276716.2020.200 1386
A
PPLICATION OF
I
NFORMATION
T
ECHNOLOGY IN
M
ENTAL
H
EALTH
E
DUCATION
B
ASED ON
B
LENDED
T
EACHING
Weiting Jiao*, Guoping Zheng, Zhimei Xue
Abstract
In recent years, the information technology (IT) has been increasingly integrated to mental health education. This paper applies the IT in mental health education based on blended teaching model, with the aim to promote education reform. The author carried out a questionnaire survey on Grade 1 students of a senior high school in Jiangsu province, China. The survey results were analysed to evaluate the mental health status of the respondents and their attitude towards different teaching methods. On this basis, several integration points of the IT into mental health education were summarized. The results show that, despite their immense interest in knowledge on mental health, the students lack a sufficient understanding of their own mental health status; 65% of them want to receive the psychological counselling of teachers, if faced with psychological problems; 63% of them prefer the scenario simulation method, revealing the necessity to integrate the IT into mental health education; the blended teaching between mental health education and the IT can improve the learning interest and efficiency, and help teachers to enhance teaching quality and master the learning progress of their students. The research results are conducive to the mental health development of students.
Key words: mental health education; information technology (IT); blended teaching; teaching practice.
Received: 12-02-19 | Accepted: 11-06-19
INTRODUCTION
Education is a theory of promoting learning by designing, utilizing, and managing resources in the learning process. Modern education emphasizes the combination of teaching theory and information technology. Under the guidance of modern educational theory, the development techniques of media should be used to enrich educational resources, and optimize teaching, thereby establishing a modern education system (Lyon, Wasse, Ludwig et al., 2016; Rao & Chandraiah, 2012). The reform of the teaching model is one of the important channels for students' intellectual development, and also an important measure to improve their skills
College of Education, Hebei Normal University of Science & Technology, Qinhuangdao 066004, China.
E-Mail: 282688572@qq.com
(Jasser, Garvin, Wiedemer et al., 2007; Farrer, Gulliver, Bennett et al., 2015). In order to adapt to the rapid development of information technology and social reform, it is necessary to integrate information technology into teaching model and teaching strategy, give full play to the effectiveness of information technology and the development of teaching information, and lead students to master new technology and science theory (Huang, 2014; Jakubec, Mascaro, Nordstrom et al., 2012; Kuosmanen, Jakobsson, Hyttinen et al., 2010).
The application of information technology in the teaching model is conducive to enhancing the students' scientific and humanistic qualities, increasing the individual's human temperament, and thus promoting their overall development (Sugita, Uchida, Miyakawa et al., 2008,
Blackburn, 2003). However, the rapid
development of information technology also inevitably put pressure on social development
WEITING JIAO,GUOPING ZHENG,ZHIMEI XUE 1387
and personal development, especially causing individuals to suffer psychological shocks (Gilmer, Ojeda, Leich et al., 2012; Mohr, Burns, Schueller et al., 2013, Mbatia & Jenkins, 2010). Therefore, information technology should be combined with mental health education, enabling students to actively and positively carry out stress relief and prevention of mental illness (Lutwak, 2014; Woolfson, Woolfson, Mooney et al., 2009). Such combination can enhance students' awareness and interest in learning knowledge, improve their ability to resist stress and mental state, and cultivate new professional talents for the society.
However, there have been few studies on the combination of mental health education and information technology, and this blended teaching model is still not mature enough, lacking theoretical and data support. Therefore, this paper attempts to systematically explore the combination of mental health education and information technology. For this, it conducts a survey on the mental health status of the first-year students from one high school in Jiangsu Province, and analyses the teaching methods of mental health education and the application of information technology. This study sheds light on integrating information technology into mental health education.
THEORIES OF MENTAL HEALTH EDUCATION AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
Mental health education theory
The design and implementation of mental health education cannot be separated from the support of relevant theories. This study involves the theories of
developmental psychology, group dynamics,
educational sociology and humanistic education etc.
In addition to learning knowledge, it’s more
important for students in the class to gain confidence, hope, feel love, and shape personality. Especially for the adolescents, their psychological development in school is a key period, and class learning has a very important influence on student psychology and behaviour. Therefore, the mental education curriculum should highlight the influence of the class on the individual, encourage students to think, actively cooperate and learn, understand the cohesiveness of the group in the cooperation, improve their personality, and enhance the awareness of unity and cooperation among students.
The interaction between people and
environment promotes the growth of human beings.
The whole life of human being is a continuous development process of personality. However, this process is full of difficulties and contradictions. If successfully overcoming the crisis and transforming it into an opportunity, they will achieve better growth. Mental health education requires students to learn more about society, adapt to society, and understand what society really looks like. Thus, they can have a good attitude to face society after entering the society (Biegler, Mollica, Sim et al., 2016; Fetter, 2009). Also, the mental health education should be in line with the actual situation of students, so that students can understand themselves, know themselves, tap their potential, promote growth, and shape healthy personality. The theory of humanistic education emphasizes the spiritual education of students, allowing students
and teachers, students and students to
communicate psychologically and enhance their mental health.
Theory and method of the integration between mental health education and information technology
In traditional education, teachers impart knowledge to students, while students passively accept, which is a unilateral transmission of
knowledge. Modern information technology
education emphasizes students' active learning and encourages learners to explore knowledge. Thus, the mental health curriculum should be integrated with information technology. The teacher's responsibility is to motivate students, inspire them to learn, and give full play to the role of students as the main body of learning, thereby achieving the goal of all-round development.
The traditional teaching model has limitations of time and space. The students' class learning is separated from the reality of life and society. The
intuitiveness and vividness of information
technology make up for these shortcomings of traditional teaching. Multimedia can visualize the common sense of psychology, displaying the image more intuitively through the integration of information. The use of information technology can help to stimulate the enthusiasm of students, clearly display the principles and ideas of psychology for
students’ easy learning, and combine with living
examples to enhance their understanding.
The design of the mental health curriculum should emphasize its practical application and comprehension ability, which requires it to be closer to the student's life and into the student's world, in order to allow students to transform the knowledge
APPLICATION OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY IN MENTAL HEALTH EDUCATION BASED ON BLENDED TEACHING 1388
Table 1.
Contents of questionnaire
Question Answer
Have you ever had a mental problem? Often Occasionally Never before
Have you ever had counselling? Often Occasionally No
How to solve the psychological problems and troubles? Psychological counseling Talk to friends Self regulation
Do you think mental health is important to you? Very important More important Unimportance
Do you think there are problems or obstacles in your
interpersonal communication? Yes Few Nothing
Do you think you need help from a psychology teacher? Indifferent Need Unwanted
What do you think are the main causes of students' psychological problems?
Interpersonal communication
Learning pressure
Emotional problems Do you think it is necessary to set up a counselling room on
campus? Be quite necessary Indifferent No need
Do you think students' mental health should be paid attention
to? Indifferent Take it seriously Don't care
What is your favourite teaching method of mental health
education? Teaching method Case analysis
Simulation scenario
What level of mental health do you think you are in? Healthy Sub-health Lower
they have acquired into the ability, effectively solve their own problems, correctly handle unstable emotions, and tap their potential.
APPLICATION OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY TO MENTAL HEALTH EDUCATION BASED ON BLENDED TEACHING MODEL
Questionnaire survey on mental health status of high school students
A questionnaire survey was conducted on the students of one high school in Jiangsu Province, in order to better understand the students' mental health status. The freshmen in this high school was mainly selected as respondents, because obviously
they didn’t adapt to the high school life well in the
first year, allowing teachers to conduct more targeted teaching and develop mental health work. The questionnaire was designed according to the characteristics of new students mainly from the following aspects: the knowledge of mental health
education, understanding of psychological
counselling, difficulties in the process of interpersonal communication, problems-solving method when encountering problems, etc. Table 1 lists the questionnaire content.
A total of 268 questionnaires were distributed in this survey, and 253 were recovered with the recovery rate of 94.4%, including 248 valid questionnaires, with an effective rate of 92.5%. The basic situation of the students surveyed is shown in Figure 1. It can be seen that the ratio of male to female was close to 1:1, and the students at the age of around 15-16 years old occupied 91.1% of the
total, which is in line with the actual situation.
Figure 1
.
Basic situation of students
0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140
6
110
5 8
116
3
N
u
m
b
e
r
Male Female
Under 15 15-16 Over 16
Survey results and analysis
Figure 2 shows the results of the survey on the students' perception of their mental health level. It can be seen that only 28% thought that they had a mentally healthy state, 18% thought lower of their mental health, and up to 54% of respondent thought that they were at the sub-health level, which needs further investigation and demonstration. The students' psychological concept of sub-health is still vague. Also, influenced by social media and the Internet, the students generally believed their mental health in a lower level, lacking of sufficient recognition.
WEITING JIAO,GUOPING ZHENG,ZHIMEI XUE 1389
Figure 2
.
Mental health level of students
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 28 54 18 P ro p o rt io n （ % ） Sub-health Healthy Lower
Figure 3
.
The importance of mental health
knowledge
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 36 60 4 P ro p o rt io n （ % ）Very important More important Unimportance
Figure 4
.
Students' understanding of mental
health knowledge
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 9 72 19 P ro p o rt io n （ % ）Perfectly clear Understand Unclear
Figure 3 and 4 show the importance and understanding degree of mental health knowledge for the students respectively. It can be seen that students had a high interest in mental health-related
knowledge, and most students acknowledged the importance of mental health knowledge, being willing to contact and understand mental health-related knowledge, while only 4% of students believed that mental health knowledge was not important; students' understanding of mental health knowledge was generally at a primary level, that is, only 9% of students were very clear about this, and 72% just had a basic understanding. Therefore, the mental health knowledge course needs to be popularized on the high school campus.
Figure 5
.
Teachers' needs for psychological
help
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 18 65 17 P ro p o rt io n （ % ）Indifferent Need Unwanted
Figure 6
.
The necessity of starting the
psychological consultation room in school
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 63 21 16 P ro p o rt io n （ % ）
Be necessary Unnecessary Indifferent
Figure 5 and 6 show the results of the survey on
the students’ acceptance of psychological
counselling. It can be seen from Figure 5 that 65% of students were eager to get help from teachers and needed psychological counselling from teachers, and 18% of students had an indifferent attitude, possibly because the adolescent students are more willing to share their secrets with friends, and prefer
APPLICATION OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY IN MENTAL HEALTH EDUCATION BASED ON BLENDED TEACHING 1390
other means for improving their mental health. Figure 6 shows that 63% of students thought it very necessary for the school to open a counselling room. The high school stage is the key stage of student growth and development. At this stage, students often encounter various kinds of confusion, so they
need teachers’ help and receive psychological
counselling
Figure 7 shows the results of the survey on the teaching form of mental health courses that students like. It can be seen that only 14% of students liked the traditional lecturing teaching, indicating that students' acceptance of traditional model is generally not high; most students preferred the form of case analysis and scenario simulation, especially the latter, i.e., 63% students liked the teaching method of scenario simulation which can stimulate students' enthusiasm for learning, and devote themselves wholeheartedly. Therefore, the mental health education needs to combine information technology to make up for the deficiency of traditional teaching methods.
Figure 7
.
Form of mental health education
course
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70
14
23
63
P
ro
p
o
rt
io
n
（
%
）
Teaching method
Case analysis
Simulation scenario
Application of Information Technology in Mental Health education
Through the analysis of students' mental health
status surveyed, it’s necessary to combine with the
psychological characteristics of high school students and the goals and content of teaching, and apply the information technology in mental health education. For this, based on the high school students' mental
health teaching practice, and information
integration technology, the paper summarizes several integration points of information technology in mental health teaching, including: pre-class
preparation, subject introduction, teaching,
student’s homework, psychological counselling, and
student mental health management.
The pre-class preparation is to fully mobilize the learning enthusiasm of students, provide sufficient psychological preparation for them to learn new
knowledge, and increase the team tacit
understanding mainly through their self-learning, group investigation and other forms; the use of information technology can improve students' learning initiative, broaden their horizons, enrich their knowledge, and increase learning fun. With the help of information technology, the classroom introduction can enable students to accurately understand the advantages and disadvantages of their memory skills, devote themselves in the class, and vivify the classroom. In the teaching process, the application of information technology can promote the modernization and informatization of teaching, and enable students to have more intuitive contact with mental health knowledge, and during the information integration, students can actively create and fully exert their imagination, think about problems from different angles. and highlight the role of students as the subject of learning.
For the student's homework, students can broaden their horizons and stimulate enthusiasm and interest in learning through the online knowledge; students' learning on the psychology website can not only help them solve problems, but also improve their own psychological quality, and enhance their self-help ability. The popularization of online psychological forums and mental health knowledge can improve students' psychological quality, offer certain help for students, and eliminate the psychological problems of students in the bud. The use of modern information integration technology can facilitate teachers to find students' problems in a timely manner, provide relevant work resources for teachers, analyse students' common problems, solve students' mental health problems, and popularize mental health knowledge.
CONCLUSIONS
Taking the mental health education of high school freshmen as the research object, this paper analyses students' mental health status and teaching models, and explores the application of information technology in mental health education. The main conclusions are as follows:
(1) The dynamic integration of mental health education and information technology is a strategy to adapt to social development and changes of the times. It is also an important measure to enhance
WEITING JIAO,GUOPING ZHENG,ZHIMEI XUE 1391
the information technology literacy of individuals and cultivate their strong will and positive attitude.
(2) Although students have great interest in mental health related knowledge, most of them have insufficient understanding of their mental health level; 65% of students thought it necessary to
receive teachers’ psychological counselling when
encountering problems, and most students preferred new teaching forms of mental health. Thus, integrating information technology into mental health education is the trend of the times.
(3) The application of the blended teaching model between mental health education and information technology in the actual teaching can not only enhance students' interest and efficiency in learning, but also improve the teaching quality and
the understanding of the students’ learning level by
the teachers.
Acknowledgement
The study is supported by Hebei Social Science
Fund Project in 2018——“Research on the
Operation Mechanism of the Coordinated
Development of Education in the
Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Region based on Supply-side Reform” (Grant
No.: HB18JY034).
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