Online improvisation training,hybrid improvisation training and on-site improvisation training;are they the same?

Abstract

Background:

Since the outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan in December 2019, lifestyle has been changing to an online-based learning and working environment rather than on-site, and improvisation training is no exception. However, no research compares the efficacy of online versus on-site training. Although we believed that the most effective way to learn improvisation is an on-site format, it is important to explore how format differences can affect learners.

Method:

We offer three types of training such as on-site training (n = 6) (Consisting of 1 female with age ≥40 and <50, and 5 males with ages ≥20 and <50), hybrid training (Instructor participates from online and learners participate on-site) (n = 120) (Consisting of 55 female with age ≥15 and <20, and 65 males with ages ≥15 and <50), and online training (n = 20) (Consisting of 4 female with age ≥20 and <30, and 16 males with ages ≥20 and <50) We collected pretest, test, and posttest data by using the Kansei Analyzer, a simplified electroencephalograph (EEG) and Profile of Mood States (POMS) questionnaire.

Results:

All formats of training displayed an increase in vigor and a decrease in depression, confusion, tension, anger, and fatigue. The online training displayed better results than the on-site training. Regardless of the format, all training displayed an increase in stress during the activities and a decrease in stress after the activity without changes in other indexes. Additionally, on-site training displayed an increase in sleepiness and stress during the activities. Some participants were tested twice but no significant differences were found between the initial results and the secondary results.

Conclusion:

In this study, we found evidence that online improvisation can lead to the prevention of depressive symptoms and can function as a method for the reduction of stress in conjunction with the increase of individual vigor. However, a future study is required due to the low number of participants and the absence of POMS data for the on-site training. Any future studies should account for these factors while examining other data such as blood pressure, blood sugar, and pulse.

Introduction

In December 2019, the world was exposed to COVID-19, resulting in a pandemic that spread globally within a few months. With more than 80 million infections, the death toll has reached 3.8 million worldwide. ¹ In addition to the loss of human life, the virus also forced dramatic changes in lifestyle, including social, economic and health impacts. ²

The education system has undoubtedly been affected as evidenced by the change from an in-person classroom format to an online classroom format. To limit the spread of the virus, people were forced to quarantine which resulted in decreased communication and increased feelings of isolation. ³ This corresponded with an increase in emotional and psychological illnesses such as depression, insomnia and anxiety. ⁴ Although it is important to maintain our physical health by limiting exposure to COVID-19, it is also important to maintain our mental and emotional health by preventing and managing these other illnesses. There is research that supports home-based exercise, exergaming, dancing to music, and participation in yoga as methods of combating the symptoms of psychological and emotional disorders. ⁵ In this study, we explored an additional method known as theatrical improvisation. The meaning of the word “improvisation” is to be in the moment and paying attention for now.^6,7 Theatrical improvisation is acting without a script. It includes various styles of verbal and non-verbal theatrical performances. Theatrical improvisation training was originally designed for theatrical purposes, but it became known as “applied improvisation” when it began to be used to aid business organizations in improving communication skills, creativity, and problem-solving. ⁸ Other studies have also supported this.^9,10

“On Your Feet” describes the underlying principles of improvisation as the following ⁸ :

Being present – implies a lack of self and other judgment and the resulting willingness to take risks, along with an ability to focus and be receptive in the present moment rather than concentrating on specific outcomes.

Being fit and well – infers a high level of confidence and competence, regardless of whether the tasks one faces are known or unknown; being fit and well means being willing to take risks with a positive attitude.

Listening - calling strongly on the ability to be present, listening requires putting one's train of thought aside so as not to impede receptivity and focusing wholly on the speaker(s).

Willingness to change and/or let go of one's agenda – a key ingredient that enables the use of information gained through listening, the willingness to change (and thereby to be changed) indicates flexibility, adaptability and openness to new development.

Accepting offers – in the field of “improvisation”, an offer is anything you can do something with – a car, a smile, a sigh, a small dog. The skill of working with offers involves sharpening one's awareness of all that present themselves; removing internal filters or prejudices that might cause one to block offers unnecessarily; and learning how to maintain a so-called flow between participants to draw productively on the unique individual talents in service of the whole.

In principle, improvisation includes four important points: (1) Full body physical movement that uses all five senses. (2) Specific movement and postures. For example, an activity named “1-2-3 Woohoo”, during which participants are instructed to raise both their hands above their head with a joyous release of “Woohoo!!!” whenever they made a mistake. This is contrary to daily life which mistakes commonly cause stress and getting tense. ¹¹ The pose is said to cause an increase in testosterone levels and decrease cortisol levels compared to the action of closing arms commonly attributed to anxiousness. ¹² (3) Laughter – Improvisation training invites laughter rather than a serious mood. On average, laughter increased blood flow by twenty-two percent, and stress decreased blood flow by thirty-five percent. ¹³ (4) Acceptance. Acceptance by addressing “yes, and?” concept increases psychological safety. ¹⁴ Psychological safety refers to team members’ shared belief about the consequences of interpersonal risk-taking within the team. ¹⁴ In improvisation training, by accepting offers and adding others’ ideas, the hierarchical and social barriers are broken, leading group members to contribute their ideas and make mistakes without fear of how other members would respond.

Kansei is a Japanese word with a meaning of “sensibility” and Kansei engineering was founded by Mitsuo Nagamichi in the 1970s. At first, it was aimed at researching the link between a customer's emotional responses to the properties and characteristics of a product or service. However, the definition of Kansei engineering spreads into more fields, for example, health and medicine. In 2016, Mitsukura published a paper on using EEG to analyze Kansei in real-time. ¹⁵ Five aspects of Kansei are utilized in this study: Like, Interest, Stress, Concentration, and Sleepiness.

There is research that supports the use of in-person improvisation for the maintenance of psychological and emotional health. ¹⁶ Before the pandemic, improvisation techniques were being used in an increasing number of settings to improve a variety of psychological outcomes. ¹⁷ Although in-person improvisation has become less common due to the risk of exposure to COVID-19, there is still no study comparing the effectiveness of online improvisation against in-person improvisation. In this study, we sought to (1) compare the similarities and differences between online, hybrid, and on-site improv sessions and (2) to explore the potential benefits and deficits of online improvisation. The dependent variables of this study are five types of Kansei: Like, Interest, Stress, Concentration, and Sleepiness, along with the six items in POMS (Profile of Mood States): Tension, Depression, Anger, Vigor, Fatigue, and Confusion.

Materials and methods

Participants

In this study, three types of training, such as on-site training (n = 6, 1 female), an online-onsite hybrid training (n = 120, 55 female), and online training (n = 20, 4 female). All participants were recruited by word of mouth and were all volunteers without any monetary reward. The experiments were approved by Keio University Institutional Review Board (IRB). Written informed consent was obtained from all participants before the start of the experiment. During all training sessions, Pretest, test, and posttest data were collected via a simple electroencephalograph (EEG) and profile of mood states (POMS) survey. Specifically, EEG data was collected from 4 min before training until 4 min after training. The POMS were collected twice, before and after the trainings only. The trainings were conducted in a group, but the POMS were completed individually, and participants are discouraged to share their results with each other, to prevent bias. These two measures were selected as they are widely used and reliable measures. Additionally, the EEG and POMS represent an automatic and self-report estimation, respectively.

The on-site training was held in August and the participants were from a Japanese company. The hybrid training with 120 participants was held in December with High School students as participants (consent from both students and their guardians were obtained). Finally, the online training was conducted in January and the participants were university students and staff. The trainings were voluntary, and the companies/school agreed to cooperate for the training.

Measures

Electroencephalography and Kansei

A Bluetooth, simple, single-channel EEG device with a sampling rate of 256 Hz (NeuroSky's Mindwave Mobile 2) was utilized to record the participants’ brainwaves. The electrode is placed on the participant's forehead (FP1 according to the 10–20 system). The 10–20 system is a standard to describe and apply the location of electrodes in the scalp. ¹⁸

As for converting the EEG to Kansei, we utilized the methods described in. ¹⁵ After 75 s worth of calibration, real-time Kansei is estimated from obtained EEG, per 1 s. The experiments were validated with medical measures such as hormonal concentration and the number of subjects were 80 to 100 persons, as some subjects did not participate in all experiment. All Kansei are quantized into values from 0% to 100%, with 50% serving as the baseline from the calibration period. The recordings were performed before and after the training session. Five types of Kansei were extracted and used as dependent variables in this study:

Likeness was defined as a universal liking based on one's own preferences. Unlike interest which corresponds to an instantaneous “WANT”, Likeness indicates universal liking.

The level of interest was defined as (1) the instantaneous “WANT” when the subject is exposed to an object and (2) the state in which the subject wants to “see more” or “know more” when the object of interest is set and removed.

Stress was defined as an instantaneous psychological load, and the EEG obtained during the experiment was analyzed by consistently moving azuki beans with chopsticks from one tray to the other with a 30 cm space between the trays.

In this study, the degree of concentration was defined as the degree of immersion in a single thing, and the state of immersion in which one's attention was focused when playing a 100-mass calculation race or a battle game was defined as concentration.

Sleepiness in this study does not mean the degree of sleep but instead refers to the sleepiness that occurs when someone starts to drift from wake to sleep. The subjects were asked to tap the desk when they hear a tapping sound from the experimenter. Sleepiness is defined as the first time the subject failed to respond to the tapping sound.

The Kansei values were then averaged per activity and the pre-test Kansei values were set as the baseline. Kansei values from all the other activities were divided with the baseline to check the changes of Kansei values between each activity.

Profile of mood states (POMS)

The POMS is a rating scale that was developed by McNair, Droppleman, and Lorr in the 1970s, ¹⁹ contains 65 questions and is a self-report questionnaire, which was independently validated in 1992. ²⁰ The latest revision of POMS ²¹ was in 2012 and is now separated into long 65 questions and short 35 questions version. Several other versions are also available.

The POMS-2 short version used in this study is the Japanese-language version that is composed of 30 items. Although POMS can be used with a specific time frame the participants in this study are asked to report based on their feelings “right now”.

The 30 items of POMS are commonly divided into 6 subscales: Anger, Confusion, Depression, Fatigue, Tension, Vigor. Five of these subscales are commonly classified as negative feelings while vigor is commonly classified as positive. The scores from the items range from 0 to 4, with 0 corresponding to “not at all” and 4 to “extremely”, thus higher vigor is “better” while higher anger, confusion, depression, fatigue, and tension are undesired. The scores from items corresponding to each subscale are then added up and used in this study. The ratio of change between pre-training and post-training for each subscale is used as the dependent variables from POMS. Statistical analysis was performed to measure compare the statistical significance between onsite training and hybrid training.

The POMS results of before and after activity were then analyzed to calculate the ratio of change. 1 indicates no change as in: post-improvisation results are perfectly similar to pre-improvisation results. The score of 0.5 indicates that the scores in pre-improvisation are double of the post-improvisation while the score of 2 indicates that the scores in post-improvisation are double of pre-improvisation.

Training

All trainings were conducted by a theatrical improvisation facilitator who facilitate in English, an interpreter (English to Japanese) and a coordinator. The sessions lasted for 45–60 min. Instructions on the activities are available in the supplementary material.

Onsite training

The onsite training includes six activities which performed in order:

Name game

Sound Ball

Walking and paying attention

YES! Game

Who is the leader?

Give a gift

Online training

Most of the online training activities are similar to the activities of onsite training except for “(5) Who is the leader?”. This particular activity needs physical interaction and therefore is not suitable for online training. As a replacement, the 5th activity for online training was “1-2-3-Woohoo!” game. This “1-2-3 Woohoo!” is only utilized in online training.

Hybrid training

In contrast with on-site training and online training, the hybrid training only consists of three activities. They were:

Name game

Sound Ball

Make a line in order with silence

Results and discussion

In this study, we compared the results of online improvisation training, hybrid improvisation training and on-site training. Limitations of this study include a relatively low number of participants and the absence of POMS data in on-site training. Additionally, the selection of the measures in this study was due to the conventional study and the cost-availability of the instruments.

Figure 1 and Figure 2 shows all formats of training displayed an increase in vigor and a decrease in depression, confusion, tension, anger, and fatigue, both from Kansei and POMS. The online training displayed contrasting results at the end of the last activity compared to hybrid and on-site training. Regardless of the format, all training displayed an increase in stress during the activities and a decrease in stress after the activity without changes in other indexes. Additionally, on-site training displayed an increase in sleepiness and stress during the activities. Two of the participants were tested twice in the hope to analyze intrapersonal changes but no significant differences were found between the initial results and the secondary results.

Figure 1.

Comparison of Kansei values. The colors indicate the type of training: Blue for on-site training, red for hybrid, and Green for online. The numbers 1 to 8 indicate the activities: ① Pretest (as baseline) ② Name Game ③ Soundball ④ Yes! game ⑤ Walking ⑥Who is the leader (on-site and hybrid) / 1-2-3-Woohoo! (online) ⑦ Give a gift ⑧ Posttest.

Figure 2.

Changes in POMS before- and after- improvisation. As the POMS consist of five negative subscales (except Vigor), lower values are more ideal. Positive values are only desirable in case of Vigor.

The pre-and post-activity POMS questionnaire were compared between the three types of sessions. In each environment, the mood state improved after the activity and the same trend of improvement was observed in the online session, although it must be noted that they are generally better than the other two types of sessions, with the negative subscales having lower values and positive subscale (vigor) having higher average value. Statistical significance (alpha = 0.05) was found on all POMS-based dependent variables except depression (p = 0.05) and vigor (p = 0.91). This is somewhat expected from the results. Vigor, as seen in Figure 2 were generally unaffected whether it's an online training or a hybrid training while the statistical significance of changes in depression value, while not statistically significant, is very close to the alpha. Nevertheless, as the p-values are not lower than alpha, we must reject the hypothesis and suggest that online training and hybrid training produce a similar effect on the depression of the subject.

Additionally, two main concerns were found during this study: (1) Environmental settings and (2) the effect of a mask. In the online training, the participants participated from their homes or their schools/companies, while in the hybrid training and on-site training, they participated at their schools or workplaces. One benefit of the online training was the clarity in verbal communication. The breakout room makes it easier to communicate by allowing you to hear and see your partner's voice and actions. This level of clarity in verbal communication is less common in on-site training and hybrid training due to background noise from other participants. Additionally, psychological safety can be established by being in a familiar environment which can be possible through online training. However, this can change depending on age, family environment, and surroundings. For some students who participated, living alone and not having others at home, familiarity with online classes due to the increase in online classes during the Corona disaster ²² and the environment are factors that contribute to psychological safety. However, not being able to see the whole body can reduce non-verbal communication, but it is possible that participants did not feel a need to observe and assess non-verbal communication while in a perceived safe environment. In addition, it can be assumed that the risk of coronary infection is reduced to zero in online training, but in on-site/hybrid training, anxiety about the risk of coronary infection is involved, making it difficult to establish psychological safety.

The presence or absence of a mask also has a significant impact on improvisation training. Improvisation is an interpersonal training conducted in a group in which we speak, laugh, and move our bodies. However, when non-verbal communication such as facial expression is disrupted due to masks, it can greatly affect trust-building and cause increased stress. It is also important to note that in improvisation training, participants often speak out loud, and the fear of corona infection might still be present even with a mask.

Conclusion and future work

Contrary to our expectation, the reason why online training is “more effective” rather than “equally effective” is that among the advantages of the improvisation characteristics, “an environment where one can speak without anxiety and read facial expressions” was found to be the most important in this study.

Based on the results, we now have five additional questions: Is the mask relevant? Would face-to-face be a better result without the mask? Is it related to the environment and habituation by COVID-19? Is participant age a significant factor? Is participant home setting a significant factor? Future study is required to answer these questions and to address the limitations stated in the discussion section: low number of participants and the absence of POMS data for the on-site training. Inclusion of more biosignals as blood pressure, blood sugar, and heart rate, and analyzing the relations between them are also a future work.

Supplemental Material

sj-docx-1-sci-10.1177_00368504221080673 - Supplemental material for Online improvisation training, hybrid improvisation training and on-site improvisation training; are they the same?

Supplemental material, sj-docx-1-sci-10.1177_00368504221080673 for Online improvisation training, hybrid improvisation training and on-site improvisation training; are they the same? by Miyako Tsubota, Brian Sumali, Mariko Kai and Yasue Mitsukura in Science Progress