Re-Imagining Alcohol Misuse Prevention with Vector’s Updated AlcoholEdu® for College

Higher education institutions strive to provide a safe environment that supports students’ well-being and helps them thrive academically and socially. Prevention programming is critical to this goal. Historically, one of the most significant safety and well-being challenges on college campuses is alcohol misuse. Despite a downward trend in recent years, this remains a pressing problem impacting nearly half of college students. According to a Vector survey, 49% of students reported consuming alcohol in the past year, and 25% reported consuming it in the past two weeks. Students reported they drink to connect with friends, have fun, or celebrate with peers but acknowledged that drinking impacts their physical and emotional health.

Alcohol misuse can have significant consequences, including causing students to have lower performance on tests and increasing the likelihood that they will skip class, according to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. It also notes alcohol is often a factor in sexual assault and that every year, students die from alcohol-related unintentional injuries, including in motor vehicle crashes.

Personalizing Prevention Programming

Vector Solutions has been a leader in prevention programming for decades, and more than 11 million first-year college students have taken AlcoholEdu® for College since its launch in 2000. This digital prevention and education program provides students with a baseline of knowledge about the risks of consuming alcohol and helps them make informed decisions about alcohol use once they start college. Many colleges and universities have made AlcoholEdu® for College a core part of their prevention programming and require all incoming students to take the course before beginning classes.

As AlcoholEdu® for College enters its 25th year, Vector is updating the course to provide a more personalized experience for students. Recognizing the ever-changing environment that students experience, Vector established an Innovation Counsel in order to gather feedback from industry experts, and they used this feedback to update the course to focus on enhancing student well-being and decision-making skills to have an even broader impact on alcohol misuse prevention. The re-imagined course fosters strong skill building, including bystander intervention skills and stress management. It also allows students to follow a specific character and explore different scenarios as the learner progresses through the course. Diverging paths are built into the course, and students make decisions about which path to take, making the experience more reflective of the individual student’s beliefs and mindset.

Colleges and universities typically have a short window of opportunity at the beginning of the academic year to mitigate the so-called “College Effect,” – a term used to describe the rise in student drinking rates over the summer before students enter college and the substantial increase after their arrival on campus. Effective prevention programming during this time period is critical to affecting mindsets and discouraging incoming students from adopting higher-risk drinking behaviors once they arrive on campus. AlcoholEdu® for College helps colleges and universities meet this challenge head-on. The course has been proven effective in eight peer-reviewed studies, demonstrating its positive impact on students’ alcohol-related attitudes and drinking behaviors and its ability to reduce negative outcomes. It’s fundamentally different in the approach and the way in which the course is educating learners, but the behavioral outcomes remain the same. The new updates to the course will enable institutions to provide an even more personalized and engaging experience for students, which can help their prevention programming have an even greater impact during those critical first months and throughout the year.

About AlcoholEdu® for College

AlcoholEdu® for College educates incoming first-year students on alcohol and other drug-related risks, bystander intervention, and community standards. Topics include:

• The effects of alcohol and other drugs
• Ways to support non-drinkers
• Recognizing and intervening in an overdose
• The role of alcohol in consent

The course is available as a standalone or part of Vector’s Alcohol and Drug Misuse Prevention student library. It is customizable and provides surveys that give institutions insights into learner attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors to help inform prevention programming. It is also available in multiple languages.