Effects of online leisure education on leisure behaviors and experiences among university students

Leisure education (LE) is designed to help foster positive leisure attitudes, identify leisure constraints and opportunities, and develop leisure skills and knowledge. Although LE is effective in many populations, its delivery has been predominantly in-person. We conducted an experimental study of a fully online LE intervention (ONLEI) with 96 university students. Our 8-week intervention occurred on a Moodle platform, featuring pre-module and post-module quizzes, information videos on YouTube, learning activities, online discussion forum, and private journaling. Our fidelity checks suggested intervention participants, on average, watched 63% of the videos, while also increasing their quiz scores. Rates for forum and journal engagement were moderate to low. Multilevel linear modeling indicated the ONLEI group showed statistically better trends for leisure participation, leisure satisfaction, and frustration of competence and relatedness needs in leisure, than the control group. However, the groups did not differ in terms of autonomy frustration and needs satisfaction in leisure.