In 2023, the Centers for Disease Control reported that 40% of high school students had persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness, 20% seriously considered attempting suicide and 9% attempted suicide. Yet, the American School Counselor Association reported that the K-12 student-to-school counselor ratio across the nation was far below recommendations. Students are facing a mental health epidemic, and schools often lack the resources needed to address it.
Keith Wakeman, CEO of SuperBetter, presenting at NIU’s 71 North Partnership Studio.
NIU and Chicago-area company SuperBetter are responding by using the psychology of game play to create simple activities and lessons teachers can use to improve wellbeing and mental health for all students. The lessons guide students through popular gameplay activities, such as battling “bad guys,” seeking out and completing quests and recruiting allies to overcome everyday life hurdles. The lessons use the proven SuperBetter framework, which has been shown through randomized controlled trials to significantly reduce depression and anxiety symptoms.
Last year, Keith Wakeman, CEO of SuperBetter, approached NIU with the goal of developing SuperBetter Classroom - a school-based model to proactively address the youth mental health crisis in a way that is practical, evidence-based and globally-scalable. A development team drawn from NIU STEAM in the Division of Outreach, Engagement and Regional Development, NIU’s Office of Innovation and the NIU College of Health and Human Sciences is working with a community advisory board to create and pilot two new products: a Teacher Wellbeing Program and a Classroom Toolkit with engaging activities to help students overcome learning barriers associated with mental and emotional wellbeing.
Both products will be tested over the summer with NIU STEAM’s summer camps to determine their effectiveness for improving student and teacher well-being and to make improvements before marketing them more broadly to schools.
Lynn Hermann, NIU professor of public health and health education, says, “From my public health and health promotion perspective, a safe and healthy learning environment isn’t just something you hope for; it’s essential for successful teachers and students. When school administrators and teachers follow the SuperBetter mindset, they lead by example, helping create a safe and healthy learning environment for all.”
The Power of Interdisciplinary University/Business Collaboration
This collaboration is the first NIU partnership funded by the Illinois Innovation Voucher Program, a state program that supports small and mid-sized Illinois businesses as they partner with research experts to develop and improve their products.
“NIU is an ideal partner to develop transformative SuperBetter products for the K12 school and higher ed markets,” Wakeman says. “The university has strong leadership, a bias for action, and deep expertise in curriculum development, public health and innovation. We’re hoping this will be the first of many collaborations between our organizations.”
Federico Bassetti, assistant director of innovation ecosystem development, helped to bring together the interdisciplinary NIU team that’s working on the project.
Bassetti notes, “Innovation doesn’t happen within a single discipline; it happens at the intersection of many. This collaboration brings together NIU Innovation, NIU STEAM and the College of Health and Human Sciences, along with studio-based initiatives such as the 71 North Partnership Studio. Each unit contributes something essential. Health and Human Sciences brings expertise in behavior change and wellness. STEAM connects design, creativity and technical development. NIU Innovation helps translate ideas into scalable solutions.”
NIU STEAM leads the design process, bringing to the partnership a team of educators with K-12 classroom experience as well as long-standing partnerships with K-12 schools, libraries and educators throughout the region.
“NIU STEAM educator Jess Winn, along with graduate assistant Amanda Hightower, a master’s student in the NIU College of Education, have been classroom teachers,” says NIU STEAM Director Kristin Brynteson, “which provides a unique perspective to our design team. They have experience in the role of the products’ end users and can help shape the final products that will be most useful in schools.”
The SuperBetter Mindset
The SuperBetter approach is based on the ideas of game developer Jane McGonigal, who delivered a popular TEDTalk and wrote the book SuperBetter: The Power of Living Gamefully. After a serious concussion, McGonigal experienced anxiety, depression and suicidal ideation. She invented the SuperBetter framework to help herself heal, applying video game concepts, such as epic quests, power ups, battling bad guys and recruiting allies, to her everyday health and well-being goals.
SuperBetter Classroom will consist of a set of tools to guide teachers and students through the SuperBetter model.
“The details vary based on the person, their goals and their situation, but it’s all about finding your story and being the hero in your own story,” Brynteson says. “Users will identify quests related to their life goals, battle the ‘bad guys’ (who might be their inner voices of negativity, for example), adopt a superhero identity, and collect and activate powerups, which might be something as simple as a brief window of exercise or a healthy snack.”
To learn more about the SuperBetter Classroom project and follow its progress and classroom launch, sign up for the NIU STEAM newsletter.