Designing a Mobile App to Support Academic Success for Student Veterans

Compared to civilian students in higher education, student Veterans have high rates of mental health disorders (e.g., Depression: 24% vs 12.1%). As a result, Veterans with mental health disorders can be more likely to experience academic issues, such as lower enrollment rates and slower degree attainment on average. Though many student Veterans could benefit from programming embedded in supported education interventions, current in-person VA supported education treatments are often difficult to access - or not available locally - for these Veterans. In addition, there is no widely available, VA-specific online or mobile-app based resource for students. The goal of this project is to develop and evaluate a comprehensive mobile app for student Veterans with mental health disorders. VetEd will provide a resource to (1) orient student Veterans with mental health disorders to successfully transition to the role of student as defined by their self-created educational roadmap, which will include helping students acquire (2) academic skills, (3) mental health management skills, and (4) up-to-date information on psychiatric, academic, and financial resources to help them successfully meet higher-education expectations. This overall study involves three aims: 1) Developing a Veteran-centered educational support app to help student Veterans with mental health disorders to identify their perceived academic needs, app preferences, and evaluate Veteran-centered content; 2) Testing and iteratively revising the VetEd app (n =15) by assessing app software, content, human-computer interface, usability, satisfaction data, and preliminary exploration of changes in educational functioning (course activity completion, academic self-efficacy, and retention; and 3) Completing final revisions of the VetEd app for a future grant application of a larger randomized controlled trial. This pilot project is significant and innovative in three key respects: (1) it extends services based in previous, effective supported education research to address both psychiatric and academic concerns for Veterans with mental health disorders; (2) is potentially cost-effective and easy to disseminate nationally; and (3) focuses on improving Veterans' academic functioning and quality of life is substantially different than current VA mobile app offerings.