Effectiveness of a Brief Online Mindfulness-Based Intervention for University Students.

Objectives: The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in a dramatic increase in Web-based education, lacking face-to-face student-teacher and student-student interaction, and consequently impairing students' sense of belonging to a community, interoceptive awareness, and academic self-efficacy. This study examined how a brief mindfulness-based intervention in an online university course can be effective in enhancing attention resources, developing a stronger sense of academic self-efficacy, and improving the sense of belonging to a community, which represent critical factors affecting students' participation in online and blended courses.

Method: Four-hundred and eighty-six participants ( 22.88) completed a battery of measures at pre- and post-treatment. One class (experimental group) participated in a brief online mindfulness-based intervention (42%), whereas the other one (control group) did not take part in the intervention (58%). The intervention included breathing meditation at the beginning of class, sharing of experiences, mini-lectures on mindfulness, and daily practice, and lasted for 28 consecutive days.

Results: Participants in the experimental group when compared to controls showed a significant increase in the feeling of influencing the course activities ( = 9.628; 0.005), in the self-regulation of attention ( = 19.133; 0.001), in academic self-efficacy ( = 9.220; 0.005), and, particularly, in their self-efficacy in regulating learning ( = 12.942; 0.001). The students' adherence to the assigned practice could partially explain the effectiveness of the intervention.

Conclusions: This study offers useful clues about the effectiveness of mindfulness interventions in the classroom in enhancing sense of belonging to a community, attention grounded in bodily sensations, and academic self-efficacy.

Preregistration: This study is not preregistered.