AlcoholEdu required for 1st-year spring registration

Research shows that students do not know how much alcohol is in one drink. AlcoholEdu for College educates students about a “standard drink,” or the specific amount of beer, wine or liquor that contains the same total amount of alcohol. This knowledge helps students better understand concepts like blood alcohol concentration (BAC).

2:57 p.m., Oct. 16, 2006--All first-year students at UD are now required to take an online alcohol education program, AlcoholEdu for College. As announced at DelaWorld last summer, students who do not complete the course by Friday, Nov. 17, will not be able to register for spring semester 2007 classes.

The course is aimed at creating a learning experience that motivates behavior change, resets unrealistic expectations about the effects of alcohol, links choices about drinking to academic and personal success, and helps students practice healthier and safer decision-making.

The entire course takes 2-3 hours and consists of two parts. The first part should have been completed by Oct. 12. Students also must pass an exam with a score of 80 percent or higher. Upon successful completion of the first part, students will receive an e-mail approximately 30 days later to log back into the course and complete the second part, which takes about 15-30 minutes.

Tracy Downs, program coordinator at Wellspring, UD's Student Wellness Program: "Requiring all first-year students to complete AlcoholEdu is just one more tool we have in our efforts to reduce the problems related to high-risk drinking."

Incoming students who have not yet logged onto the course should go to [www.udel.edu/network] and enter their UDelNet ID and password. Students will then click on “Go to AlcoholEdu” to begin the course.

"Requiring all first-year students to complete AlcoholEdu is just one more tool we have in our efforts to reduce the problems related to high-risk drinking," Tracy Downs, program coordinator at Wellspring, UD's Student Wellness Program, said.

Used on more than 450 college and university campuses nationwide, the course is designed as a population-level prevention program to be given to an entire population of students, such as an entering first-year class or a national Greek organization.

More than 250,000 students nationwide have taken AlcoholEdu for College, producing the world's largest database on college students and alcohol based on their responses to course surveys.

Data from students who completed the program in summer and fall 2004 showed that AlcoholEdu for College:

Increases practical knowledge--71 percent said they now know more about blood alcohol concentration and 44 percent of men know more about how alcohol affects consent for sex;
Motivates students to change behavior--The percentage of heavy-episodic drinkers who did not see a need to change their behavior dropped by almost 30 percent after AlcoholEdu, and the percentages of students who were trying to change doubled; and
Decreases negative consequences--For the entire 2003-04 academic year, students who took the program had significantly fewer negative personal, health and academic consequences.

An independent evaluation of AlcoholEdu for College by Andrew Wall at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign showed that students who completed AlcoholEdu experienced a 50 percent reduction in negative academic and personal consequences, such as missing class, blacking out, having unprotected sex and vomiting in public.

“Our primary reason for making this population-level effort to focus on alcohol education is simply the concern we have about the health and safety of our students,” John Bishop, UD associate vice president for counseling and student development, said.

AlcoholEdu is part of a broader effort at UD to combat underage drinking and drug abuse, funded in part by a $1.2 million three-year federal grant.

Any questions about AlcoholEdu should be directed to Downs at [alcoholedu@udel.edu].

Article by Martin Mbugua
Photo by Kevin Quinlan

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