Relevate is a new word around the K-State MFT program, in fact it’s a word starting to emerge at research conferences, in classrooms and on social media. Relevate is a verb that means to elevate your relationship, but it’s also a name for the interdisciplinary team created by our very own Amber Vennum. The Relevate team consists of marriage and family therapists, computer engineers, marketing specialists, relationship scholars and educators, and young adults who are passionate about improving the health of individuals and their relationships. Over the past two and a half years, this team has worked toward developing a smartphone app and website meant to fill the chasm between current relationship research and the research-based relationship knowledge accessible to the public.
The mobile platform, MyRelevate will benefit two different types of users. MyRelevate has been and will continue to be developed based on feedback from young adult users (age 18-29) through formative research. For these users MyRelevate will provide engaging, research-based information that adapts according to the individual. The second user group consists of relationship scholars, practitioners and educators. The Relevate team has been in contact with interested professionals in the fields of marriage and family therapy, family studies, extension and psychology to request help with beta testing the MyRelevate platform for functionality of uploading research-based relationship content created and/or collected by these experts.
Next on the agenda for Relevate:
- The Relevate team will create resources for relationship scholars and educators to turn their relationship science into engaging material for the public.
- Our software engineering students are creating and refining an interface for relationship scholars to begin uploading engaging, research-based content.
- Our software engineers are preparing the MyRelevate public interface for beta testing (formative research) by users for fall 2016.
Ways to help:
- Check us out on social media: Facebook,Pinterest, Twitter and YouTube.
- Do you have online press releases about your work, a blog, video, PDFs written for lay audiences, etc.? Email Amber Vennum at avennum@k-state.edu and we’ll share them on our social media sites and to MyRelevate as development progresses.
- Sign up at the link below to beta test our contributor interface, rate the helpfulness of our tutorials and give us feedback: https://kstate.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_0qY3QmVOUSgrXWl
- Visit our Indiegogo page or email avennum@k-state.edu to learn about other avenues for supporting the cause.
- Keep doing what you’re doing. The work you do makes this possible.
