ClearMind Workshop: An ACT-based Intervention Tailored for Academic Procrastination among Computing Students

Academic procrastination is a prevalent issue among students, detrimentally impacting their academic performance and well-being. Although existing Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) interventions have aimed to alleviate this problem, they often follow generic ACT protocols, lacking customizations to address the challenges of academic procrastination. In this study, we introduce the ClearMind Workshop, a unique workshop that utilizes web-based ACT content and additional content to explore the nature, causes, and management strategies of procrastination. We assessed the effectiveness of the workshop by collecting pre- and post-survey data from workshop participants (N=19) and a control group (N=38) on their level of procrastination, anxiety, and subjective happiness and their use of coping strategies. Results reveal that the workshop reduced academic procrastination and anxiety in computing students. Participants adopted healthier coping strategies such as positive reframing and active coping strategies, while practicing less unhealthy ones such as self-blame and avoidance strategies. These findings encourage future directions on assessing long-term effects with a larger sample size, exploring additional variables, and integrating technology-based or online interventions.

Among the stress/anxiety-oriented interventions, those based on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) has gained prominence for reducing academic procrastination [10,21,24,35,47].ACT focuses on acceptance and mindfulness of the present moment to promote psychological flexibility [13,15].This contrasts a more traditional approach named Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), which focuses on changing thoughts and behaviors to modify maladaptive emotional responses and reducing symptoms [20].Yet, ACT has shown higher potential in long-term behavioral change compared to CBT [1].
However, existing ACT interventions for academic procrastination simply utilize general ACT protocols, without any specific customization to address academic procrastination [10,21,24,35,47].Furthermore, to our knowledge, none of the prior research has examined the application of ACT interventions among computing students struggling with academic procrastination.Thus, this study designed and piloted the ClearMind Workshop, a low-touch ACTbased intervention designed to overcome academic procrastination among computing students.This in-person workshop utilized Levin's web-based ACT intervention [23] content but with some additional content that explores what procrastination is, its causes, and ways to manage it based on ACT principles.
We evaluated the effectiveness of our workshop specifically from four aspects which further detail our research hypothesis: "The ClearMind Workshop improves the level of academic procrastination, the level of academic anxiety, the use of different coping mechanisms, and the level of subjective happiness." The evaluation was done through a controlled study comparing the pre-and postsurvey responses of the workshop participants against those of the control group.The pre-and post-survey consisted of validated scales from the psychology field, including Academic Procrastination Scale [29], Academic Anxiety Scale [3], Brief-COPE [2], and Subjective Happiness Scale [27].The survey responses were analyzed using 1) Mann-Whitney U test [28] to examine statistical differences in score changes between pre-and post-surveys; and 2) Hedge's  [17] to determine the magnitude and direction of the effect sizes.
Our results showed that the workshop reduced academic procrastination and academic anxiety among computing students.Additionally, the workshop participants learned to practice healthier coping strategies more such as positive reframing and active coping strategies; while they practice unhealthier strategies less such as self-blame and avoidant strategies.We also found a slight positive impact on their subject happiness.All these positive observations appeared to be well-aligned with the goal of ACT: accepting difficult emotions with self-compassion and aligning their behaviors with their values.Through the workshop, the participants seemed to have acquired such skills, which eventually helped them stop simply avoiding difficult emotions and thoughts (i.e.procrastination) and push themselves towards their value (i.e.academic success) by practicing healthier coping strategies.
Our findings motivate future inquiries into assessing long-term effects using larger sample sizes, investigating additional impacts, and integrating our in-person workshop into technology-based or online interventions.

Intervention on Procrastination
Procrastination is commonly defined as 'voluntarily delaying an intended course of action despite expecting to be worse off for the delay' [38] or 'the act of needlessly delaying tasks to the point of experiencing subjective discomfort' [37].Procrastination is prevalent among university students.Studies have shown that around 50% of university students exhibit persistent procrastination in academics, while more than 80% of them engage in procrastination behaviors [6,8,31,32,37,38].
Multiple prior works found that procrastination in academics, noted as academic procrastination, negatively impacts students.They observed that students who procrastinated consistently performed more poorly on term assignments than students who did not procrastinate for various reasons [39].Another study conducted by Rothblum et al. found that students with high procrastination displayed higher test anxiety, and trait anxiety than those with lower procrastination levels [34].Some prior research on computing students also mentioned procrastination exacerbates lower-performing students' learning as they cannot secure enough time to ask for help [25,26].
Correspondingly, various kinds of intervention for procrastination have been explored.They can be categorized as time-management-oriented and stress/anxiety-oriented interventions.Time-management-oriented intervention sees procrastination as a behavior caused by poor time management, so these approaches introduce effective time-management skills.Some successful examples are: reminder messages until students complete their tasks using Short Message Service (SMS) [5], the Pomodoro Technique and Flowtime Technique [7], and training sessions on the cyclical model of self-regulated learning and time management [12,18].
These psychotherapy-based interventions primarily used two types of psychotherapies -Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) -and evidence suggests both are effective.However, previous literature also says ACT may lead to a broader and more sustained behavior change than CBT, as CBT tends to focus on symptom reduction [1].Moreover, ACT is believed to be more transdiagnostic so it can be applied across a wide range of psychological disorders [14].

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy
ACT emphasizes acceptance and mindfulness of the present moment [13] to accept situations and negative feelings as part of life.It was introduced by Hayes in 1986 and contrasts with CBT which focuses rather on changing thoughts and behaviors to modify maladaptive emotional responses [20].
ACT consists of multiple components -acceptance, defusion, contacting the present moment, self-as-context, values, and committed action [15].Working through its components, ACT aims to help individuals live more fulfilling lives by enhancing psychological flexibility [13].Psychological flexibility refers to accepting the present moment and redirecting attention toward committed actions aligned with personal goals and values.
ACT is known to be an effective intervention for various clinical and mental health conditions [4,9,11,16,41,48,49].It has been found to ease psychosis [11], substance use [16], chronic pain/stress [4], and obsessive-compulsive disorder(OCD) [41], anxiety and depression [9,41,48,49].The evidence implies that it also helps overall well-being [11].Some studies also highlighted the efficacy of ACT as an alternative treatment approach.Zettle and Hayes found that the ACT treatment group that contained patients with depression demonstrated the most improvements in depression compared with cognitive restructuring alone and cognitive restructuring plus distancing group [48].Moreover, the study of Forman et al. revealed comparable effectiveness between ACT and cognitive therapy in reducing symptoms of anxiety and depression [9].
Several studies also investigated the effectiveness of ACT particularly in academic settings [21,24,35,47].These studies found that ACT significantly reduced math anxiety [47], reduced symptoms of stress and depression [24], and improved psychological/emotional/social well-being [35].Some other studies found that ACT interventions even improved time management and study skills as well [21].Some ACT-based interventions even tried scalable approaches such as self-guided, web-based programs in academic settings.For Assess the tendency to procrastinate Five-point Likert scale, ranging from 1 = "Disagree" to 5 = "Agree" Academic Anxiety Scale [3] 11 Assess the level of anxiety in an academic context Four-point Likert scale, ranging from 1 = "Not at all typical of me" to 4 = "Very Typical of me" Brief-COPE [2] 28 Measure the effectiveness of coping strategies under stressful life events Four-point Likert scale, ranging from 1 = "I haven't been doing this at all" to 4 = "I've been doing this" Subjective Happiness Scale [27] 4 Measure subjective well-being and happiness level Seven-point Likert scale.The specific labels for each item vary depending on the context instance, the ACT on College Life (ACT-CL) program [22] and Chopin [10] have demonstrated effectiveness in reducing academic procrastination [10].These findings collectively support the effectiveness of ACT in promoting well-being and academic success among students.However, these ACT-based interventions have simply integrated the universal principles of ACT without any customization for a particular context, such as procrastination.Thus, our work designed and administered a workshop specifically tailored for computing students who struggle with academic procrastination.Our workshop supplement Levin's online ACT program, the ACT Guide Lite [23], with added content that delves into understanding what procrastination is, why it happens, and how to resist the urge to procrastinate.We included slides and discussion points around these topics that extend beyond the traditional ACT content.Our work serves as a stepping stone towards our long-term goal: developing a scalable ACT-based intervention that effectively assists computing students in overcoming academic procrastination.

Our work investigates the following research question:
• [RQ] Does a low-touch, in-person workshop focusing on academic procrastination using ACT techniques show any change between week 1 and 10 in: the level of academic procrastination the level of academic anxiety the use of different coping mechanisms the level of subjective happiness

Study Design
Our treatment, called the ClearMind Workshop, consisted of two one-hour sessions in week 1 and 2 respectively of an academic term.The workshop was in-person and two of our authors led both sessions altogether.
The workshop started with a brief introduction on what ACT is and how the workshop integrated the ACT content; then it walked through steps of ACT techniques and how these steps could help manage the urge to procrastinate.The steps are -finding out what is important in your life, acknowledging the urge to procrastinate when it comes up, making room for the urge, and committing to small steps toward your purposes.For each step, we integrated a series of activities: 1) listening to brief explanations by the workshop hosts, 2) working on the relevant parts in ACT Guide Lite [23], then 3) sharing their responses with the other workshop participants as a group.At the end of the workshop, we also offered some specific strategies to help prevent the urge to procrastinate in the first place.
The workshop was hosted at a North American R1 institution in winter 2023 with 23 first-/second-year students who were enrolled in 3 entry-level courses of the data science major.The curricula of these courses are similar to the entry-level courses in the computer science major; they cover programming, mathematics, and computer systems.19 of them self-selected to be part of this study, and they completed the workshop and surveys in the end; we refer to them as "the experimental group" for the rest of this paper.A gift card was offered to them as compensation.
To evaluate our hypothesis, we also recruited "the control group." The control group consisted of 38 first-and second-year data science students, which are often enrolled in the same introductory data science courses as those in which the experimental group was enrolled.The control group also received either small extra points towards their final grade or a gift card for submitting the surveys as compensation.

Data Collection
Participants from both the experimental and control groups completed the pre-and post-surveys, at the beginning and end of the academic term respectively.The surveys collected information about participants' academic year, major, and gender, followed by 68 questions derived from four validated psychological scales to evaluate our research question.The scales used in this study were the Academic Procrastination Scale [29], the Academic Anxiety Scale [3], the Brief-COPE [2], and the Subjective Happiness Scale [27].Table 1 provides more details on each scale.

Data Analysis
We compared the experimental group against the control group in terms of the delta between their pre-and post-survey responses (i.e.post-survey minus pre-survey).These delta values are noted as   and   , referring to a collection of responses from the experimental group and the control group each.The comparison was made both at the overall-scale and individual-question level, for each scale we used.This was to grasp differences between the two groups both overall and in more detail.However, due to the space limit, this paper presents the results on only some individual questions which showed some statistical significance, along with the overall-scale level analysis.
at the overall-scale level was calculated by summing up the scores of individual questions from each corresponding scale for Mann-Whitney U test [28] was used to make a comparison between   and   , as the sample sizes were small and not all data points met the normality assumption.It is important to acknowledge that non-significant difference findings might be due to low statistical power rather than the absence of actual effects.We also measured the magnitude and direction of the effect using Hedge'  [17] with a bias correction, an adjustment for sample sizes under 50.We set a threshold of ±0.1 for Hedge's  to identify meaningful differences, given that our work is preliminary and with small sample sizes, the changes observed between the experimental and control groups are likely to be modest.In this context, a "meaningful difference" implies a Hedge's  value exceeding 0.1, indicating a noticeable difference.

The level of Academic Procrastination
The distribution of   and   with the Academic Procrastination scale at the overall scale level is provided on Figure 1a.At the overall scale level, the experimental group showed a significantly greater decrease in academic procrastination (i.e.  <   with  = 0.04 and  = −0.17).The mean of   was lower than the mean of   (−0.12 vs. 0.08) as well.
The distribution of   and   for some notable individual scale items were depicted in Figure 2.Only two out of 25 items, 'I waste a lot of time on unimportant things' and 'I get distracted by other, more fun, things when I am supposed to work on schoolwork', showed a significant difference in   and   with negative meaningful differences in effect size ( = 0.02;  = −0.16 and  = 0.05;  = −0.15).Figure 2 lists two additional items that still displayed negative meaningful differences in effect sizes , despite their low -values from the Mann-Whitney U test.They were: 'I allocate time so I don't have to cram at the end

The Level of Academic Anxiety
At the overall scale level, no significant difference was found between   and   ( = 0.18).Still, there was a negative meaningful difference in effect size ( = −0.13).This indicated that the decrease in academic anxiety of the experimental group was larger than that of the control group on average (−0.18 vs. 0.02).Figure 1b also shows that the minimum and maximum of   are smaller than those of   .
The first three items in Figure 3 showed statistically significant differences between   and   with meaningful negative effect sizes.These three items were 'I spend much of my time at school worrying about what is next' ( = 0.03;  = −0.17Next three items on Figure 3 did not yield significant differences between   and   when it comes to the  values but still had a negative meaningful difference in effect size.These items were 'There's something about school that scares me' ( = −0.12),'I often feel sick when I need to work on a major class assignment' On the contrary, the last two items on Figure 3 showed positive meaningful effect sizes.This indicates more increase in   than in   , on average.The two items were 'I often worry that my best is not as good as expected in school' ( = 0.11) and 'I often worry that I am not doing assignments properly' ( = 0.13).

The Use of Different Coping Mechanisms
In terms of the overall scores on Brief-COPE, no significant difference was found between   and   ( = 0.77;  = 0.02).Nonetheless, the mean of   was higher than the mean of   (0.07 vs. 0.05, Figure 1c).
First two individual items on Figure 4 had a significant difference between   and   : 'I've been refusing to believe that it has happened' ( = 0.02;  = −0.19),'I've been looking for something good in what is happening' ( = 0.04;  = 0.13).Note that the first item had a negative meaningful difference in effect size (i.e. the experimental group showed a larger decrease in their responses on the post-survey than the control group), while the other item had a positive meaningful difference in effect size (i.e. the experimental group showed a larger increase in their responses on the post-survey than the control group).
The rest four items in Figure 4 did not show a significant difference between   and   but still exhibited meaningful

The Level of Subjective Happiness
No significant difference was found between   and   on the overall score of the Subjective Happiness scale.However, the effect size was close to the threshold of being considered a meaningful positive difference ( = 0.09).Figure 1d also indicated that the mean and median of   was higher than   .None of the individual items of the Subjective Happiness scale showed a significant difference between   and   or displayed a meaningful difference in effect size either.

DISCUSSION
The authors are pleasantly surprised by the impact of our workshop, given how low-touch it was.Considering that academics tend to be more intense towards the end of a term, the fact that we still see such significant improvement within the experimental group at the end of the term, compared to the beginning of the term, is far more surprising.

The ClearMind Workshop and Procrastination
The larger decrease in procrastination of the experimental group from the overall-scale level analysis, compared to the increase of the control group, suggests that the ClearMind Workshop has a potential benefit in reducing levels of procrastination.Such improvement in procrastination within the experimental group seems related to their application of ACT principles: recognizing their values (e.g.academic success) and taking meaningful actions aligned with their values and goals (e.g.stop procrastinating and do the school work).
Specifically, the experimental group learned to accept and focus on the present moment regardless of how tough the situation is.This observation might be associated with the positive changes observed in their coping strategies (Figure 1c).Their responses to an item about denying the present moment decreased ('I've been refusing to believe that it has happened'); and this decrease was meaningfully larger compared to the control group's.The experimental group showed an increase even in a positive reframing strategy as well ('I've been looking for something good in what is happening'); while the control group showed a decrease.Similarly, the experimental group showed a significant decrease in a self-blame and avoidant strategy ('I've been blaming myself for things that have happened', 'I've been criticizing myself', 'I've been giving up the attempt to cope') while the control group showed an increase in both.These findings are also consistent with what prior literature found as benefits of ACT, helping one to detach oneself from thoughts and emotions and to be more self-compassionate [46].
A potential increase in accepting the present moment and selfcompassion may have influenced the experimental group's tendency towards more active coping strategies ('I've been concentrating my efforts on doing something about the situation I'm in') and possibly, a decrease in overall procrastination.  from the academic procrastination scale suggested the experimental group might have learned to 1) choose behaviors that better align with their goals (decrease in 'I waste a lot of time on unimportant things' and 'I get distracted by other, more fun, things when I am supposed to work on schoolwork') and 2) keep up with important things (increase in 'I allocate time so I don't have to cram at the end of the semester' and decrease in 'I don't spend much time studying school material until the end of the semester').On the contrary, the control group showed the opposite trend: a decrease in active coping strategy and goal-oriented behaviors, and an increase in putting important things off.We believe it is plausible these observations are attributed to the ClearMind Workshop, which explicitly talks about how to make room for difficult emotions and take meaningful action toward their value -academic success.

The ClearMind Workshop and Students'
Well-Being/Achievement Goal Although the ClearMind Workshop primarily targeted reducing academic procrastination, it also seemed to lower students' academic anxiety and shift their academic achievement goals.All these positive changes may have slightly impacted the experimental group's subjective happiness as well.The negative meaningful difference in effect size and lower distribution of   on Figure 1b suggests that the experimental group may have experienced a reduction in their academic anxiety levels overall.Also, 8 out of 11 items on the Academic Anxiety Scale showed a notable decrease within the experimental group (Figure 3).Such decrease in academic anxiety may be attributed to the decreased procrastination, as the experimental group showed a decrease in anxiety specifically related to their responsibilities ('I have a hard time handling school responsibilities,' 'I spend much time at school worrying about what's next,' and 'I often feel sick when I need to work on my class assignment').
Some items on the Academic Anxiety Scale also suggested that the experimental group's academic achievement goal became more self-oriented than not.They had an increase in 'I often worry that my best is not as good as expected in school' and 'I often worry that I'm not doing assignments properly'; and a decrease in 'I am concerned about what my classmates think about my abilities' and 'I am less confident about school than my classmates'.On the other hand, the control group showed a decrease in the first two items and an increase in the latter two.This result is highly encouraging as prior research in computing education suggested that students with self-oriented achievement goal (i.e.Mastery) performs better than those with others who care more about performing better than classmates (i.e.Normative) or appearing to perform better than classmates (i.e.Appearance) [50].This change could also be related to ACT principles: teaching people how to live a more valueoriented life.We suspect through the workshop the experimental group noticed their values are not in how others judge them and this might have helped them become more self-oriented.

THREATS TO VALIDITY
One threat to validity of this study is the relatively small sample size.This may have impacted the accuracy of the significance tests and effect size calculations.To mitigate this threat, we have presented overall distributions of notable items in Section 2.2 along with the statistics.Given the novelty of our work in computing education research, we believe our preliminary results are still worth being shared with the community.

CONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORK
This paper presents the ClearMind Workshop, an in-person ACTbased intervention designed to tackle academic procrastination in computing students.Our findings demonstrated a reduction in academic procrastination and anxiety and a slight increase in subjective happiness levels.Notably, participants acquired more constructive coping mechanisms like positive reframing and active coping strategies and diminished their reliance on unhealthy methods such as self-blame and avoidance strategies.These results were in line with the aim of accepting challenging emotions with self-compassion and aligning behaviors with values and goals.Participants learned not to avoid difficult thoughts and feelings, but instead embrace them and become motivated toward their values by adopting healthier coping strategies.
The results of this study open possible directions for future work.Firstly, we can replicate the ClearMind Workshop with a larger sample size and keep track of longer-term changes in procrastination, academic anxiety, coping strategies, and subjective happiness.We also plan to look at the impact of the workshop on other factors too such as achievement goals.This would help capture the effect of the workshop further.Moreover, we aim to enhance the scalability and accessibility of the workshop by integrating the content into an online self-guided format.

Figure 2 :
Figure 2: Score change for some notable items in the Academic Procrastination scale (*:  < 0.05, ★: mean) of the semester' ( = −0.14),and 'I don't spend much time studying school material until the end of the semester' ( = −0.12).The distributions of these two items showed more decrease in   than in   as well.

Figure 4 :
Figure 4: Score change for some notable items in the Brief-COPE scale (*:  < 0.05, ★: mean) differences in effect size.The first three among these four had negative effect sizes: 'I've been criticizing myself'( = −0.16),'I've been giving up the attempt to cope' ( = −0.11),and 'I've been blaming myself for things that have happened ( = −0.10).The last item had positive effect sizes: 'I've been concentrating my efforts on doing something about the situation I'm in' ( = 0.14).

Table 1 :
Psychological Scales Used in the pre-survey and post-survey