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IS480 Team wiki: 2015T1 Vulcan Project Overview

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HOME ABOUT US PROJECT OVERVIEW PROJECT MANAGEMENT DOCUMENTATION


About SMU Mindfulness Initiative

The vision of the SMU Mindfulness Initiative is to make a positive impact on individuals, organizations and society by conducting research, education, and outreach on mindfulness. The initiative brings together various members of the SMU community (faculty, staff, and students) as well as others passionate about studying, teaching, and practicing mindfulness. The initiative engages in activities such as conducting basic and applied research on mindfulness and mindfulness interventions in business and society, developing courses / modules on mindfulness and offering ideas on integrating mindfulness into other course, and providing evidence-based mindfulness courses to organizations on topics such as mindful leadership, among others.

About ReFokus
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Of late, there has been a lot of interest in the concept of mindfulness and how it can improve well-being and productivity. One way to cultivate mindfulness is through the practice of meditation. Although there is evidence that meditation can reduce stress and depression, much more research is needed—especially research that looks at the effects of meditation in everyday contexts (at home, work, and elsewhere). ReFokus, an Android Meditation Application, introduces guided meditation exercises for the users. A novel aspect of the app is that is doubles as a research assessment tool. Users would be prompted to complete short surveys after each exercise as well as randomly throughout their day. The data collected are presented as feedback to users; they also help the researcher evaluate whether the exercises improve well-being. Finally, the content delivered by ReFokus is updatable through a web portable that enables researchers to design and evaluate the effectiveness of mindfulness-based interventions (MBI) in users' everyday life.

Objective

Introduce an convenient way to reach out to larger pool of participants and generate scientific data to support the benefits of meditation and how it improve one’s quality of live.