Conference Agenda

Digital well-being has become a critical priority as European evidence (OECD, WHO) highlights declining well-being among adolescents and teachers alongside growing digital misuse. PERMA-Digital responds by developing a scalable whole-school framework that integrates Positive Psychology’s PERMA model with DigComp, LifeComp, and the SELFIE self-reflection tool to promote healthier, more purposeful engagement with digital technologies in schools across Europe.

This presentation provides educators and school leaders with a practical introduction to applying the PERMA-Digital framework in real settings. Participants begin by examining how Positive Emotion, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning, and Accomplishment can be translated into digital-education contexts.

Preliminary multi-country research insights from 20 schools (CY, GR, FI, IE) will be discussed to illustrate real-world impact, challenges, and the potential for policy influence at national and EU levels.

Participants leave with practical tools, a draft action plan, and a clear understanding of how PERMA-Digital can be adapted for schoolwide implementation and strategic planning.

The MTU eLearning Development Services Unit (EDSU) has designed two workshops focused on enhancing Digital Wellness for a first-year cohort of 33 students. These sessions introduce students to the concept of digital identity—what it is, how it develops, and how it shapes digital reputation. This component draws on the work of Masiero & Bailur (2021), encouraging students to reflect critically on the ways their online presence is constructed and perceived. Building on this foundation, participants explore key elements of digital wellbeing, understood as the impact that digital devices, tools, services, and systems have on individuals. This section is informed by Feerrar (2020) and Laffier (2025), who highlight the importance of intentional, reflective engagement with technology. A central theme across both workshops is the need for self‑awareness, emotional regulation, socio‑emotional learning, and mental health literacy as essential components of a balanced digital experience for third‑level students. The conceptual framework developed by Laffier, Rehman, & Westley (2025), alongside the Digital Flourishing Model from the Digital Wellness Institute, provides a structured lens through which students can examine their own habits and behaviours. Participants also gain insight into the significant effects of excessive digital consumption, including its impact on concentration, wellbeing, and lifestyle. The workshops address both the benefits and the potential downsides of digital engagement, helping students develop strategies to manage their digital lives more effectively. Finally, the sessions introduce practical skills for healthy technology use, including the responsible use of AI‑enabled tools. Research by Blankson (2018) and Zhen, Liu, Hong et al. (2019) demonstrates how intentional digital practices can transform personal technology use. Students are also introduced to a range of digital applications that can positively support and enhance digital health and wellbeing.

Recent research in the domain of social robotics suggests that there is potential to support students in their learning and well-being, within a tertiary education context, through engagement with a social robot.  For example, a review by Youssef et al (2023) presents a variety of applications for social robotics in education, noting the potential of social robots for learning assistance and language learning. The use of social robotics as conversation catalysts in discussed in Huili (2025), while Johal et al. (2022) identified personalized learning as a key area for future research, noting that the affective nature of the robot was considered important for learner interaction. Popular robots such as Pepper© and Nao© are frequently chosen for research in social robotics, because of their expressive body movements and personality traits, (see Velentza et al. (2021) and Belpaeme and Tanaka (2021) for examples). However, robots such as these are quite expensive, therefore social robots such as Zenbo© and Buddy© are more accessible and often used to explore how social robotics could support students through task-based scenarios and affective interactions. This presentation will provide an overview of a research project involving senior faculty from the disciplines of Engineering, Education and Social Sciences, who introduced a social robot (Buddy©) to students on campus, inviting them to interact with the robot to complete specific tasks. The presentation will also share feedback from students, gathered via an anonymous questionnaire to capture key insights into students perceptions of and reactions to social robots as a tool to support learning and student well-being.

In the light of platformisation, datafication and surveillance within everyday interactions on university educational spaces (Macgilchrist et al., 2022), this practitioner paper is based on survey research of teachers’ experiences and digital fatigue in teaching online, in an Irish higher education institution. It adopts a practitioner focus in problematising this dilemma, and in light of survey responses, looks towards what actions might exist, and what responses might negate some of these perceived ill effects. As higher education becomes increasingly digital, teachers’ roles and forms of academic labour are being reshaped. Successive waves of technological change are impacting on classroom dynamics and reconfiguring relationships between students and staff who teach. In this context, we examine how digitally mediated pedagogy affects teachers’ wellbeing in various ways.

Our preliminary findings indicate that digital fatigue is a common experience among teaching staff. Over 27% of respondents reported experiencing digital fatigue frequently or very frequently, while 50% reported experiencing it occasionally when teaching. The primary contributors to digital fatigue were increased and prolonged screen time. Additional contributing factors included time spent preparing digital teaching materials and managing high volumes of online messages and queries, along with juggling grading and feedback workloads. To support their wellbeing, strategies such as taking regular breaks from screens, setting clear boundaries around work, and seeking peer support were reported.

We reflect upon potential responses to this, with a focus on practical down-to-earth actions (after Birhane, 2021) that are relational and go beyond technical solutions. We invite the audience to participate, (after Benjamin, 2024; Brazier, 2024), to validate some of our explorations and dream a little.

References

Benjamin, Ruha. (2024). Imagination: a manifesto. W. W. Norton & Company.

Birhane, Abeba. (2021). Algorithmic injustice: a relational ethics approach. Patterns, 2(2), 100205. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.patter.2021.100205

Brazier, Ariana. (2024). The Imagination Playbook. https://www.imaginationplaybook.com/question-game

Macgilchrist, Felicitas, Potter, John, & Williamson, Ben. (2022). Reading internationally: if citing is a political practice, who are we reading and who are we citing? Learning, Media and Technology, 47(4), 407-412. https://doi.org/10.1080/17439884.2022.2140673