About the Programme

Funded by Teaching Development Grants (TDG) of The Education University of Hong Kong (EdUHK), A "Hope Programme" was developed and launched by Dr. Angel N.M. Leung, Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology, EdUHK in 2020 to 2021. The programme aimed to increase student's hope level and related psychological well-being. The programme was comprised of a zoom lecture, six online e-learning modules, and a smartphone app-based TG bot. The programme covered these six topics:

(1) Structuring Hope

(2) Developing a positive and specific goal

(3) Visualization

(4) Hope Reminding

(5) Reflection

(6) Applying Hope for Future

The hope programme benefited a total of 678 students

In the developmental phase – 8 students tried and commented on the preliminary design of the programme, a focus group interview was conducted with them to finetune the design.

In general, their comments were:

learnt the ideas of “Hope” and how to set up goals
they believed they became more hopeful after joining the programme
they would recommend other classmates to join the programme.

In phase I, 562 students joined the hope programme, which consisted of a zoom session that briefly introduced hope, and 6 online modules on Moodle. About a total of 148 students completed the questionnaire on a voluntary and anonymous basis for the evaluation of the programme.

Question 1: "I paid attention when I worked on the 6 hope modules." Mean = 5.86 (Max = 7)
Question 2: "The 6 hope modules helped me know more about hope; and reflect concepts on hope or positive psychology." Mean = 5.89 (Max = 7)
Question 3: "The 6 hope modules are well-designed, and easy to follow." Mean = 6.09 (Max = 7)
Question 4: "I will recommend these 6 hope modules to my classmates." Mean = 5.79 (Max = 7)

The top 3 most favourite modules reported by the students:

Module 4 - Hope reminding (N = 66)
Module 2 - Developing a positive and special goal (N = 63)
Module 3 - Visualization (N = 56)

In phase 2, a total of 101 students joined either the 'hope programme' as experimental group, or a 'research writing skills programme' as control group, by random assignment.

About half of them joined the ‘hope pgoramme'. They accessed a zoom session that introduced hope, and 6 online modules on hope on Moodle;
The other half of them joined a 'research writing skills programme' which included a zoom session that introduced academic writing skills, and 6 online modules on writing on Moodle.
The purpose of setting an experimental group vs. a control group was to allow comparison of changes in hope level and understanding of hope concepts over time and across groups.
A TG Bot was developed and included for students to access the materials for both groups of students.

7 students helped in the process of creating hopeful stories, TG Bot and videos development.

What have we found?

For phase I, concerning students’ hope level and psychological well-being, results found that there was a significant increase in students’ academic domain hope level after joining the programme. There was also a significant increase in life satisfaction after joining the programme.

They also had significant increase in understanding on concepts related to hope.

For phase II, participants who joined the “hope programme” had significant increase in state hope level and understanding on concepts related to hope over time, as compared with those in control group.

What is hope?

Hope is your G.P.A

G - Goals
P - Pathways
A - Agency

Goal refers to something that you hoped to reach and achieve.

Agency refers to the perceived ability to initiate and sustain motivation to reach goals (Synder, Rand, & Sigmon, 2002).

Pathway thinking refers to a self-perceived ability to generate multiple routes to reach goals (Synder, Rand, & Sigmon, 2002).

Therefore, Hope is the ability to think of multiple ways to reach a goal via different routes (pathways) and the motivation (agency) to use the pathways identified.