HETL Note:

In this academic article, Drs  Luísa Soares, Karolina Baras, Catarina Faria, and Cristina Coelho discuss the challenges faced by students as they transition to higher education. The authors discuss how mentoring can be an effective approach to prepare them for academic and social life. The authors discuss the benefits of using a mobile application, as a student support service, to acheive this aim.

Author Bios:

Luísa Soares is a Portuguese native from Madeira island, a psychologist, university professor and PhD in psychology. Assistant professor of Psychology at University of Madeira. Researcher at Larsys in Madeira Interactive Technologies Institute Director of Post-graduation studies on human aspects of technology at University of Madeira (UMa).

 

 

Karolina Baras is assistant professor at the University of Madeira since 2012, and a researcher at Madeira Interactive Technologies Institute since 2015. She holds a PhD degree in Technologies and Information Systems, obtained in 2012, at the University of Minho, Portugal. Her research interests are in the field of the Internet of Things and well-being.

 

 

Catarina Faria has a degree in Psychology and a Master’s Degree in Educational Psychology from the University of Madeira (2013). She completed the Professional Internship and Internship of the Portuguese Psychologists’ Order at the Psychological Service of the University of Madeira between 2013 and 2014.

Cristina Coelho has a degree in Psychology from the University of Madeira (2010) and a Master’s Degree in Psychological Intervention, Human Development and Education, from the Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences of the University of Porto (2012). She completed the Professional Internship and the Internship of the Portuguese Psychologists in the Psychological Consultation Service of the University of Madeira between 2013 and 2014.

 

The Smartphone project: Digital tools to promote university students’ psychological well-being

Luísa Soares, Karolina Baras , Catarina Faria, Cristina Coelho 

University of Madeira, Portugal

Abstract

The transition to higher education and the adaptation process brings challenges to students. Peer mentoring can be a valid response to those challenges, preparing them for academic and social life in the university context. However, contact between tutors and tutees can become difficult considering students’ time management. In addition, some students can feel embarrassed and ashamed when asking for help. We think that building a mobile application, similar to peer mentoring, can be a real advantage, as a student support service. In order to pursue this idea, first we conducted a survey in a Portuguese public university, asking 101 students of 1st cycle of some courses. Students pointed out critical periods in adjustment process and academic life, referring to difficulties such as anxiety, lack of sleep, group conflicts, time management or too much work studying. The development of the application aims to take into account the needs and characteristics that students identified in the survey, and looks to automatically release some motivational sentences or practical strategies, according to student’s schedule. Our main goal is to use technology and mobile resources to promote students’ well-being and adaptation to university, as nowadays students increasingly use applications on their mobile phones on a daily basis.

 

Keywords: University, Adjustment, Mentoring, Mobile application.

 

Introduction

The access to university has increased in the last decades. The transition from high school involves an adaptation process that is not always easy for students. There are several changes in this new context, and new challenges to overcome. Autonomy and responsibility are very important in this period. Students need to face with higher responsibilities, adapt to new forms of learning, manage time and stress. Tutoring or mentoring is an efficient way to help new students in their adaptation process, sharing knowledge, experiences, tips, or reminding them what they have to do.

There are distinct periods of time during a semester when students may encounter many difficulties, related to stress level, fatigue level, conflicts and amount of content to study. Thus, it is important to find out when these periods that make students feel more anxious, tired, demotivated, discouraged or confused actually occur. Based on these data, we can promote adaptation and students’ well-being by providing useful tips, reminders, positive and motivational phrases that may help them overcome difficult times, in other words, offer them a kind of personal tutor or mentor, with customized features.

Nowadays, the use of mobile devices is becoming increasingly widespread, especially among young people. Mobile technology has been used for health and educational purposes, with good results (Vitorino, 2011; Ferreira, 2009). Smartphones, featuring sensors, audio and video recording, as well as considerable memory and processing capabilities are becoming an essential part of a relatively new approach to behavioral lifestyle interventions (Stephens & Allen, 2013; Lathia et al., 2013).

We believe that a mobile application, aware of the critical periods of students and providing a number of positive and motivational messages, could help them face difficulties and challenges of their academic life, promoting smoother adaptation and psychological well-being, similarly to a personal virtual tutor. As literature shows, mobile applications can be used to leverage behavioural change interventions (Backinger & Augustson, 2011) as they may act as an additional persuasion tool to make individuals change their behaviour, acquire new habits or adapt to them.

Students’ well-being in university

The access to higher education involves academic, social, personal and vocational changes. This transition process brings several challenges and pressures that can lead to stress or loneliness feelings, lack of interest and depression (Santos & Almeida, 2001). The impact of college challenges, as a source of stimulation and difficulty, depends on the student’s personality and also on the support that is available at the university. The role of universities must not be forgotten, as they are so important in the promotion of their students’ well-being.

Well-being can be considered a facilitator condition for academic success and also as an indicator for general students’ adaptation. There are several concepts related to well-being, such as happiness, energy and life satisfaction. Research involving students, from two Portuguese universities, showed that students regularly tend to feel in a good mood, showing also positive feelings towards university (Lemos, Coelho & Soares, 2011). A similar study with college students from Latin America, though, indicated that students often have negative feelings during their academic life (e.g., anxiety, moodiness, sadness and fear; Geib, Krahl, Poletto & Silva, 2007). Teachers identified as major problems, for first-year students, time management, the amount of work and the evaluation moments (Sim-Sim, Marques, Frade & Chora, 2013). Besides that, various difficulties may be associated with academic, vocational, interpersonal and social skills. Research has shown that, students with major difficulties in these areas, have low academic performance, are more likely to drop the course and to ask for assistance to psychological support services at the university (Almeida et al.,2002).

In recent years, the interest in research with college students and their experiences has grown. This new interest is justified by the increasing number of individuals studying at universities (Teixeira, Castro & Piccolo, 2007). The heterogeneity of college students has also increased. Students present major differences in relation to social class, gender, age, and employment status, academic and psychosocial needs. This is why the university must be prepared to promote the cognitive, social and professional development for all students, no matter how different they are (Silva & Heleno, 2012).

E-Peer Mentoring: Mobile phone usage in university settings

Nowadays, a new mobile society is emerging with a huge variety of information sources and means of communication available at home, at university and in a larger community. The mobile phone usage has been rapidly increasing in the last decade and it has been subject to many considerations about its utility in several domains, such as motivation, psychological effects or impact on campus life. Extensive research and huge investments have been carried out to develop technological learning in recent years.

The increasing number of students in higher education, the technological advances and the adaptation difficulties, have raised academic structures awareness of the need to work in an innovative way with students. Mentoring has been an innovative educational way to assist students in the vocational process and academic success. The peer tutoring/mentoring method corresponds to the action of peers teaching, with the advantage of student interaction as a potential resource for learning. Besides that, peer tutoring takes advantage of the cultural, linguistic, cognitive and behavioural differences between students.

In Portugal, there are some experiences on using mobile phones in educational context, but they are not published yet. There is data about the utility of mobile technology, used by the students as a reminder, doing almost what a tutor/mentor does. For example, a study conducted by Vitorino (2011), in which the author used mobile technology in assistance and health support, showed the utility of mobile applications in healthcare. The author concluded that users who were remembered by SMS notifications about activities and medical procedures had fewer failures in monitoring and medical treatment, than those who did not receive SMS.

A study from the University of Porto, in Portugal reveals that students send on a weekly basis, over two thousand mobile phone messages (Figueiras, 2008). Another study by Ferreira (2009) reveals students’ and professors’ opinions, about the mobile phone usage in educational contexts. The results suggest that there is an interest in, for example, being able to mark the exams on a smartphone, set an alarm to warn students about homework assignments, use notepad to collect notes, use the recorder media player to replay the classes at home, or to do group assignments using the data transfer between peers via Bluetooth. Professors themselves, consider that if some contents were shared via SMS, students could become more interested and motivated.

The young people attending universities are digital natives as they were already born in the era of new technologies. The use of mentoring mobile applications has advantages for the process of teaching and learning, like reaching to a greater number of people, who can be socially more isolated.

The mentoring activity in the educational context involves a close monitoring and systematic orientation held by more experienced peers. A tutor needs to have good teaching skills to encourage others to learn, to guide them, to facilitate problem identification and find creative solutions. Tutors encourage students to organize themselves in the academic experience, helping them to focus on personal goals, motivation for study, to manage anxiety and stress towards evaluation periods and share useful studying methods. In general terms, a mentoring program aimed for students in higher education has, as main goals, to integrate the new student into the academic context and to promote their personal and interpersonal development. Thus, it is intended, in the first place, to help new students to know the institution and its services. Furthermore, it aims to create a kind of “network host” composed by older students to avoid social isolation and promote connections between new people, define and achieve their academic goals (Simão, Flores, Fernandes & Figueira, 2008).

In general terms, indeed, the tutor can be considered as a guiding route and encourage the student to make decisions consistently with their time availability, interests, rights and duties (Geib et al.2007).

Mentoring, usually involves a weekly hour for tutors and tutees to gather. Also, the mentoring meetings are limited to a certain period of time, providing asynchronous response to the immediate need of the student. Although, this type of meetings can overload students who are having several difficulties with managing their time, and can also be a source of anxiety for students who are particularly shy or anxious.

A mobile application could help to expand the boundaries of higher education into an “anytime/anywhere” experience. Also, this tool can protect student from social exposure. From time to time, students can search for answers to some common questions and seek for practical knowledge and pieces of information concerning health, studying habits, time management, anxiety control and oral presentations. Getting access to the practical information through the mobile phone is easier for students, as it has been proved, by Sim-Sim et al. (2013).

Students see themselves as proficient mobile users. A recent study (Bowen & Pistilli, 2012) showed that 42% of university students, from the United States are smartphone users, for more than six months. They occasionally download applications when they need them or when their friends recommend something new. On the other hand, 43% of students have been using a smartphone for two years and have installed and used a variety of different apps. They often install many applications of the same type to evaluate differences and make recommendations to their friends. In the same study, the researchers found that 49% of students use applications related to education. The students also use mobile phones frequently to perform tasks related to the university: access the course schedule (15%), access the assignment grades (16%), access course recordings (21%), review course material (23%), share documents with other students in a study group or team (23%) and take quizzes (26%).

Typically, students use time management, communication and productivity applications. However, these applications are not designed specifically to support their activities, such as attending lectures, reading course content, revising for exams and other course deadlines (Corlett, Sharples, Bull, & Chan, 2005).

Based on the results of the above study, it becomes clear that the mobile technology has become ubiquitous among students. This can pave the way to new teaching and learning strategies that higher education institutions may come to develop and adopt. Mobile learning can enhance education by putting students in a real context and make the process more appealing, motivating and interesting.

An application, named Alykko (Silander & Rytkonen, 2005) was developed for tutoring students’ individual learning processes. This application works as a basis for mobile learning and for tutoring dialogue between students and teachers, with automatic and semi-automatic tutoring features. Alykko is, in the first place, a teacher’s tool and it provides readymade structure for tutoring and student learning processes. Additionally, it solves many difficulties related to the teacher’s tutoring work, making it less time-consuming and focused on pedagogical issues, instead of memorizing or document management. For example, a trigger-agent sends automatic trigger messages to students in order to remind them of doing something or, about reflections about the subject course. In addition, automatic trigger messages are used to initiate and maintain dialogue, when needed. Besides that, automatic questions concerning students’ personal issues identified by them, in an early stage of the process may also be generated, (Silander & Rytkonen, 2005).

Mobile applications can be used to promote learning through social interaction – collaborative learning – or through activities that promote learning as a change in observable action – behaviourist learning. Also, an important fact is that interventions with mobile applications have favourable cost-utility ratios (Hebden, Cook, Van der Ploeg & Allman-Farinelli, 2012).

The idea of collaborative learning, as used in educational Psychology courses, leads us to think about building a mobile application, considering the Vygostsky’s approach to social-cultural psychology. Conversation theory, supported by Pask, (1976), describes learning in terms of conversations between different systems of knowledge. This means that, taking into consideration mobile devices, we can consider them as a system that supports collaborative learning by providing another way of coordination without attempting to replace any human-human interactions, as opposed to online discussion boards, which replace face-to-face discussions (Zurita & Nussbaum, 2004).

According to a behaviourist learning perspective, the use of mobile devices provides an accessible and handy way of presenting learning materials, obtaining responses from learners and providing appropriate feedback. This paradigm draws from Skinner´s work on operant conditioning and behaviourism. Applying this to educational technology, mobile learning is the presentation of a problem (stimulus) followed by the contribution from the part of the learner of the solution (response). Feedback from the system then provides the reinforcement. Learning takes place through the transmission of information from the tutor (by the means of the mobile phone) to the students (Naismith, Lonsdale, Vavoula & Sharples, 2004). Nevertheless, this is another channel of communication with the student, besides their real human tutor.

M-learning represents a challenge for students, teachers and institutions. According to the report Mobile IT in Higher Education (Dobbin, Arroway,  Dahlstrom, & Sheehan, 2011), 45% of inquired university institutions apparently have no specific strategy for the mobile-enabling of their services. Among those that have adopted a strategy in this area, mobile web only strategy (consisting of adapting existing web applications to operate on the mobile devices) seem to be the most popular one, followed by a combination of mobile web and native applications for specific mobile devices or operating systems. Some institutions, have developed new assessment systems based on mobile technology others adapted the existing ones.

When institutions decide to start using smartphones as preferred method to connect with their students, calendaring is one of the first applications to be developed. However, this subject is not new, because a mobile learning organizer has been developed at the University of Birmingham (Holme & Sharples, 2002) and was also evaluated. The mobile learning organizer comprises an integrated suite of tools for students to access course material, view their timetables, communicate via e-mail and instant messaging and organize ideas and notes. They noted that students made considerable use of the calendar and timetabling features as well as the communications tools. At the end of the study, 30% of them were using the device every day (Corlett et al.,2005).  Mobile devices used to have some limitations, like small screen size, limited memory, limited battery life and high costs (Vinci & Cuchi, 2007), but more recently these are almost overcome, as today’s smartphones “place more digital memory and processing capabilities in individuals’ pockets than computers of decades past placed on peoples’ desktops” (Lathia et al., 2013).

Procedures

The main objective of our work is to develop a mobile application that may serve to students of a Portuguese university as a virtual tutor, helping them to manage stress levels and time, inspiring them with positive and motivational phrases, reminding them about their obligations, homework, assessments, etc. We gather a team of psychologists and engineers to discuss how this could be done, working together. The goal is to promote the students’ adaptation to university and to foster their psychological well-being and academic success. This application will be calendar-based. After the installation, a student will complete a quick questionnaire about him/her and their appointments. After that, the application will generate tips, reminders and strategies according to the type of appointment. Also, a user may ask for help manually, searching for topics of interest, such as anxiety control, study methods, strategies for good sleep, etc.

In the first phase of the study, we developed a questionnaire to evaluate the perception of students about their adaptation to the university and psychological well-being, focusing on different periods of the semester. This questionnaire assesses in which period they feel more tired or anxious, when they feel more difficulties in studying, sleeping and coping with their responsibilities, etc. Also, we asked them about the means of communication they use more frequently to express their feelings, and whom they do it with.

The second phase of this study relates to the analyses of the results of the survey that students answered. After that, and according to the perceptions of students about their greater difficulties in each period of the semester, the psychologists constructed several sentences that should be generated by the application, (built by the engineers of the team) according to the theme, the level of difficulty, and the type of activity that students have in their schedule.

The third phase will consist of the development and evaluation of the prototypes of the conceived application. The idea here is to recruit a group of participants to see and test the prototypes, to comment on the proposed design, features and contents and suggest changes or enhancements. This feedback will be extremely valuable for the further development of the application, to ensure that it responds to the student needs and interests.

The fourth and the last phase is the experimental phase, when we will provide students a trial version of the application. Again, we expect to receive feedback from them in order to improve and build a better application.

Participants

A total of 101 students, from a Portuguese university participated in this study, by answering the survey. There were 47 females (46,5%) and 54 males (53,5%) participants. Most of them (69%) were in 2nd year of their course. There were participants from several courses, such as Engineering (47%), Psychology (31%), Nursing (14%), Biochemistry, Biology, Design, and Management.

Data Collection

An online survey was constructed with several questions, divided in three parts. After a few demographic questions in the first part, the second part consisted of questions concerning usage patterns of means of communication, like personal conversations, text messaging, e-mailing and the most frequent interlocutors for different types of conversations. The third part consisted of several questions related to their academic life, considering three critical periods of time: first month of classes, periods of exams or oral presentations and periods of teamwork or individual tasks. Students were asked to participate in this study, answering the survey anonymously, taking a few minutes of the class.

Results

Data were analysed with SPPS 20, using descriptive statistics. Concerning habits and means of communication, most of students use oral conversations to express their feelings, more commonly with friends, also using mobile phone text messages. In terms of physical fatigue, students consider that the period of exams is the worst, although they also feel tired during group and individual works. Fatigue and sleepiness is very common in each period. Students consider that they have more moments of sadness, anguish and distress during exams, and they consider that this period is more difficult to handle stress and manage time, but also during team and individual work period.

Almost 50% of participants consider that they do not sleep enough, mostly during exams and teamwork period. During the exams period and oral presentations, students tend to doubt their capabilities.  Also, half of the participants admit that they feel anxious during the exams period and the teamwork tasks. Curiously, anxiety seems to be higher when they are doing teamwork tasks.

Students show more difficulties in studying on a systematic and organized way during the first month of the academic year. Also, in this period is when students show less interest in classes and participate less, but is also when they feel more enthusiasm. Although they feel more anxious and irritable during teamwork tasks, it is also when they show more interest in classes and increase their participation.

These results make the bridge to our application, since they take into account the periods that student need more positive reinforcement, useful and clever strategies, support and motivational help. As mentioned earlier, the idea is that the application works with a calendar base, where students may schedule different tasks. Depending on the nature of the task, the application will launch different feedback. Thus, our goal is to make a custom application, that allows students to receive, for example, several notifications before an exam, such as “have you started your study?/ are you prepared for the exam you have on Wednesday?/ Two days left for your exam. It’s time to make a review on your notes. / Tomorrow is your exam, sleep well, eat well, arrive on time, relax and believe: you can do it!”. It is also important to launch sentences after the exam, congratulating student for his effort and encouraging him to relax. Concerning the theme of anxiety, the following are some of the examples of strategies to be used and launched by the application: “Feel and know your body, listen to your breathing and make it slow down. / Put your hands on the abdomen, breath calmly and easily, feel all your body getting relaxed./ Before the exam, make sure your body is relaxed. Stretch your muscles, be confident./ Visualize yourself in a positive way during the exam./ Drive away the negative thoughts, you can do it!”.

Conclusions and future work

As the number of students in higher education institutions increases and mobile technology advances ever more rapidly, new challenges arise for the students, for faculty and for the institutions. New methods for teaching, learning, support and service providing need to be adopted in order to meet students’ needs and habits. In this article, we have discussed peer mentoring as a valid response to those challenges. To support the direct contact between tutors and tutees, we propose the use of a mobile application, which uses technology and mobile resources to promote students’ well-being and their successful adaptation to university.

In the conducted survey, students pointed out critical periods in adaptation process and academic life, which are going to be taken into account during the application development. The main purpose of the application is to act as a personal virtual tutor that releases motivational sentences or practical strategies, according to the student’s schedule.

In the future, it will be important to capture information that makes it possible to assess impact and effectiveness of mobile initiatives in the learning and student success. Are university institutions ready to promote the use of mobile technology in the classroom and throughout the campus by supporting bring-your-own-device methods?

 

References

Almeida, L. S., Soares, A. P. C., & Ferreira, J. A. (2002). Questionário de Vivências Acadêmicas (QVA-r): avaliação do ajustamento dos estudantes universitários. Avaliação Psicológica, 1(2), 81-93. Recuperado em 06 de outubro de 2017, de http://pepsic.bvsalud.org/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1677-04712002000200002&lng=pt&tlng=pt.

Backinger, C., & Augustson, E. (2011). Where there’s an app, there’s a way? American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 40(3), pp. 390-391.

Bowen K.  & Pistilli, M. (2012). Student preferences for mobile app usage. Research Bulletin, 7, 25.

Corlett, D., Scharples, M.,Bull, S. & Chan, T. (2005). Evaluation of a mobile learning organizer for university students. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 21, pp. 162-170.

Dobbin, G., Arroway, P., Dahlstrom, E., & Sheehan, M. (2011). Mobile IT in Higher Education, Ecar Research Hub, 12, 2. Boulder. CO: EDUCAUSE.

Figueiras, I. (2008). Novas tecnologias ditam rotina dos adolescentes. Universidade do Porto.

Head, M., & Ziolkowski, N. (2010). Understanding student attitudes of mobile phone applications and tools: a study using conjoint, cluster and SEM analyses. 18th European Conference on Information Systems.

Hebden, H., Cook, A., van der Ploeg, H., & Allman-Farinelli, M. (2012). Development of smartphone applications for nutrition and physical activity behavior change. JMIR Res Protoc., 1(2).

Holme, O. & Sharples, M. (2002). Implementing a student learning organiser on the Pocket PC platform. In Proceedings of MLEARN 2002, European Workshop on Mobile and Contextual Learning (eds S. Anastopoulou, M. Sharples& G.N. Vavoula), pp. 40–43. The University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK.

Lathia, N., Pejovic, V., Rachuri, K. K., Mascolo, C., Musolesi, M., & Rentfrow, P. J. (2013). Smartphones for large-scale behaviour change interventions. IEEE Pervasive Computing (May 2013).

Lemos, M. S., Coelho, C., & Soares, L. (2011). Avaliação do bem-estar dos estudantes: adaptação da escala de bem-estar:afeto na escola. Atas do VIII Congresso Iberoamericano de Avaliação Psicológica, Faculdade de Psicologia da Universidade de Lisboa.

Naismith, L., Lonsdale, P., Vavoula, G., & Sharples, M (2005). In Literature review in mobile technologies and learning.  United Kingdom: FutureLab.

Pask, A. (1976). Conservation theory: Applications in Education and Epistemology. Amesterdam and New York: Elsevier.

Santos, L., & Almeida, L. (2001). Vivências académicas e rendimento escolar: estudo com alunos do 1.º ciclo. AnálisePsicológica, 2(XIX), 205-217.

Schleich, A. L. (2006). Integração na educação superior e satisfação académica de estudantes ingressantes e concluintes. Dissertação de mestrado em Educação. Faculdade de Educação, universidade Estadual de Campinas: Campinas.

Silander, P., & Rytkonen, A. (2005). An intelligent mobile tutoring tool enabling individualization of students´ learning processes. Proceedings of mLearn 2005.

Silva, E. & Heleno, M. (2012). Qualidade de vida e bem estar subjetivo de estudantes universitários. Revista Psicologia e Saúde, 4 (1), 69 – 72.

Simão, A., Flores, A., Fernandes, S. & Figueira, C. (2008). Tutoria no ensino superior: concepções e práticas. Sísifo/Revista de Ciências da Educação, 7, pp. 75-88.

Sim-Sim, M., Marques, M., Frade, M., & Chora, M. (2013). Tutoria: perspetiva de estudantes e professores de enfermagem. Revista Iberoamerica de Educación Superior, 4 (11), 45- 59.

Stephens, J., & Allen, J. (2013). Mobile phone interventions to increase physical activity and reduce weight: a systematic review. Journal of Cardiovascular Nursing, 28(4), pp. 320-329.

Teixeira, M., Castro, G, & Piccollo, L. (2007). Adaptação à universidade em estudantes universitários: um estudo correlacional. Interação em Psicologia, 11 (2), 211 – 220.

Vinci, M., & Cucchi, D. (2007). Possibilities of application of e-tools in education: mobile learning. Paper presented at the ICT for Language Learning, Florence, Italy.

Vitorino, A. (2011). A tecnologia celular aplicada na assistência e suporte à saúde. Revista Inovação Tecnológica.

Zurita, G. & Nussbaum. N. (2004). Computer supported collaborative learning using wirelessly interconnected hand-held computers. Computers & Education, 42 (3), 289-314.

 

This feature article was accepted for publication in the International HETL Review (IHR) after a double-blind peer review involving independent members of the IHR Board of Reviewers and one revision cycle. Accepting editor: Dr Charlynn Miller

Suggested citation:

Soares, L., Baras, K., Faria, C., Coelho, C. (2018). The Smartphone project: Digital tools to promote university students’ psychological well-being. International HETL Review, Volume 8, Article 9, https://www.hetl.org/the-smartphine-project-digital-tools-to-promote-university-students-psychological-well-being

Copyright 2018 Luísa Soares, Karolina Baras, Catarina Faria, and Cristina Coelho

The author(s) assert their right to be named as the sole author(s) of this article and to be granted copyright privileges related to the article without infringing on any third party’s rights including copyright.  The author(s) assign to HETL Portal and to educational non-profit institutions a non-exclusive licence to use this article for personal use and in courses of instruction provided that the article is used in full and this copyright statement is reproduced. The author(s) also grant a non-exclusive licence to HETL Portal to publish this article in full on the World Wide Web (prime sites and mirrors) and in electronic and/or printed form within the HETL Review. Any other usage is prohibited without the express permission of the author(s).

Disclaimer:

Opinions expressed in this article are those of the author, and as such do not necessarily represent the position(s) of other professionals or any institution. By publishing this article, the author(s) affirms that any original research involving human participants conducted by the author(s) and described in the article was carried out in accordance with all relevant and appropriate ethical guidelines, policies and regulations concerning human research subjects and that where applicable a formal ethical approval was obtained.