Abstract:

Introduction:
During the Covid-19 pandemic, university students presented a reduction of health and well-being level (e.g., Gestsdottir et al., 2021). E-learning methodologies represented a protective factor to students’ psychological health (e.g., Zhu et al., 2021) as well as activities directly addressed to promote students’ well-being (e.g., Theurel et al., 2022). Consistently with this last direction, the present study aimed to investigate the role of playing activities in favouring university students’ well-being. As game-activities are tools to socialize, to be rewarding (see Bruner, 1976; Staccioli, 2012) and to experience the mental state of flow and its positive effects (Csíkszentmihályi, 2000), it was hypothesized that a playing experience in which students interact face-to-face through the screen mediation (screen-to screen game-activity) could lead to a well-being increasing.

Method:
The study involved 49 female university students attending a bachelor degree or a post specialization course (Mage=40.51, SD = 10.74) during an online lesson. At first, they filled out a questionnaire about their level of well-being (α=.756); then, they spit up in online rooms to interact in little groups to play; at the end, they completed a questionnaire about their level of well-being during the game-activity (α=.890) and about their satisfaction with the experience (α=.782).

Results:
Results showed that the general level of well-being (X=2.75, SD = .70) was lower than well-being related to game-based experience (X=4.29, SD = .75). Specifically, results from repeated measures analysis of variance indicated that this difference was significant, F (1, 48) = 130.31; p = .000. This result was confirmed by satisfaction questionnaire: the well-being associated to game-activities positively related with participants’ satisfaction (r = .513; p = .001).

Discussion:
Screen-to-screen game-activities was a successful instrument to provisionally improve university students’ well-being during the covid-19 pandemic and it could represent a useful activities to promote the psychological health of people who live isolated due, for example, to social-health reasons. Limits, strengths and possible educational interventions will be discussed.

Keywords:

e-learning, online interactive games, university students, well-being.