A free, open-source app designed to support self-regulation among adolescents with ADHD during the school day. It runs on the smartphones and tablets schools already own.
Project description
ADHD affects roughly five percent of school-age children and strains the affected adolescents, their teachers and the whole classroom. Effective non-pharmacological approaches such as mindfulness, brief movement and calming audio are well established, but were designed for lengthy, guided formats. Almost none translate into something a teacher can use in an ordinary lesson, without special equipment, extra staff or cost per child.
FOKUS-ADHS closes this gap. The app offers three short, evidence-based exer-cise types, mindfulness, brief movement and a calming audio environment, that teachers slot into the school day. It builds on the existing open-source DAVI platform, for which data-protection assessments have already been conducted, and continues the solution developed and tested as part of a PHBern master's thesis.
The project is a feasibility and acceptance study: it investigates whether such a tool can be used practically and accepted in real Swiss classrooms, and what conditions are required for sustainable use. At project end, the app, its source code and a German-language Teaching Kit are freely available to every Swiss school.
Management
- Dr. Isabelle Krummenacher, PHBern, [email protected]
- Prof. Dr. Ken Ritley, BFH, [email protected]
References/Links
App mock-up; DAVI platform; Brand (2025) master's thesis, PHBern.