The benefit of reviewing personal feedback to students' learning of clinical communication skills is well researched. Less is known about the factors that related to students' engagement in reviewing non-compulsory online feedback, and ways to motivate their behavioural engagement. In this paper, we reported two studies in which medical students completed assessed clinical video conferencing consultations with human simulated patients via an online training platform that also provided automated and human feedback for students. In Study 1, three days after the consultation, an email with different instructional styles (autonomysupportive, controlling or control) was sent to different groups reminding students to review their feedback. In Study 2, up to three repetitions of the same, either autonomy-supportive or controlling, emails were sent to students. Results of Study 1 revealed that students who reviewed feedback before receiving emails achieved higher assessment results and reported higher degree of autonomy to participate in the training program than the remaining students.However, the different instructional styles of the single email in this study did not significantly influence the students' engagement differently. Study 2 results revealed that students who received controlling emails displayed higher engagement than students who received autonomy-supportive emails. Findings suggested that multiple factors might influence students' engagement in reviewing their online feedback, and this study provided evidences of the effects of using emails to motivate students to review the feedback.

Volunteering benefits those who receive and those who provide help. Yet barriers can inhibit engagement with and motivation for volunteering activities. Online environments on one hand help to lower some of these barriers, but on the other hand they can introduce new obstacles specially when the medium transforms the social interactions important to volunteers. We study the motivational drivers of online volunteering, and how those are affected by design. Specifically, we focus on relatedness as a source of motivation. We describe two studies with volunteers that help medical students to learn and improve their communication skills through mock interviews in an educational program. The volunteers can participate in the program face-to-face or through an online platform. The first study consisted of a survey (n = 66 volunteers), two workshops and one interview (n = 12 volunteers) in which we explored volunteer demographics, motivations, psychological needs, and experiences. Findings suggested relatedness can be an important indicator of volunteer motivations. In the second study, we added a feature to the online platform to display personal gratitude messages from student beneficiaries to the volunteers in order to improve the experience of relatedness between them. In total, n = 30 volunteers completed 196 sessions. We used survey and system data to assess the impact of gratitude on perceived relatedness, motivation, and behavior (immediate, booked, and completed appointments). Results showed that the expression of gratitude by the beneficiary significantly affected the volunteer's experience of relatedness which then correlated with immediate appointments booking behavior by each volunteer. The implications for design of online volunteering systems are discussed.

A large proportion of women experience depression during the postpartum period. Few studies have investigated the use of mobile technology to prevent postpartum depression in women. This study investigated the preliminary effectiveness of the CareMom program, a new app-based cognitive behavioral therapy program, on reducing the depressive symptoms of mothers during the very early postpartum period via a pilot randomized controlled study. The participants were recruited during birth hospitalization (within 3 days after giving birth) and randomized to the waiting-list control and CareMom groups. Over the four-week intervention period, the CareMom group was required to complete 28 daily challenges via CareMom. The depressive (via EPDS) and anxiety (via GAD-7) levels of participants were measured at baseline and every 7 days postbaseline for 4 weeks. A total of 112 eligible participants were randomly allocated to the two groups (CareMom: n = 57; control: n = 55). At week 4, the CareMom group achieved a significantly lower EPDS score than the control group at week 4 (p = 0.037). In addition, the EPDS (p < 0.001) scores of the CareMom group were significantly lower than the baseline values. However, the control group did not show any significant reduction in this measure. No significant reduction of GAD-7 scores was observed for CareMom and control groups at week 4. This study provides preliminary evidence of the effectiveness of CareMom in reducing depressive symptoms in the general postpartum population during the very early postpartum period.