Boosting Emotional Intelligence With a Mobile Application

College of Education faculty Ricardo Ainslie and Chris Brownson have received a Longhorn Innovation Fund for Technology (LIFT) award to develop a mobile application that will boost students' emotional intelligence.

Ainslie is a professor in the Department of Educational Psychology and Brownson is a clinical associate professor in educational psychology as well as director of UT Austin’s Counseling and Mental Health Center. The two will be working on the project, which is called Thrive@UT, with a team that includes Counseling and Mental Health Center staff Elana Bizer and Katy Redd.

"Emotional intelligence refers to how accurately someone reads their own emotions and the emotions of others, then uses that information to guide what they do and how they think and feel," said Ainslie. "With students, higher emotional intelligence usually means more success in school. If our mobile app can help students better handle the transition from a structured high school setting and the familiarity of living at home to the challenges of college life, they’ll be more likely to stay in college and graduate in around four years."

According to Ainslie, the mobile application will offer interactive exercises, videos, and assignments that promote emotional growth and prompt students to practice beneficial behaviors. The application will also send users alerts, reminding them of key learning points and encouraging them to apply the concepts in their daily activities.

Based on feedback from a preliminary student focus group, the team is going to start by targeting self-awareness and resilience, two factors of emotional intelligence that have the greatest impact on student academic success and that are well-suited to being taught on a mobile application. 

“This application is unique because students won’t just be tuning in and using it one or two brief times,” said Ainslie. “The application will continue to engage them throughout the day, every day. This tool is also different in that most existing interventions address a specific mental health issue like depression, anxiety, or insomnia, for example – ours will target broad factors that underlie emotional wellness and life success in general and that are relevant to all students.”

Once the application has been completed and launched, it will be maintained and updated by the Counseling and Mental Health Center. 

“This project puts UT Austin on the leading edge when it comes to combining technology and mental health interventions,” said Ainslie. “Our students will have tools that aren’t, to our knowledge, available at any other college or university.”