When American psychology professor Laurie Santos put her courses on the science of wellbeing online, she had no idea what it would trigger at Yale University.
The thought of a pandemic was still a long way off;
rather, the Yale lecturer was responding to the growing number of her students who were attracting attention for anxiety and depression.
Within a short time, Santos' offer became the most popular course in the three hundred year history of the venerable university.
And since the coronavirus took control of the world, your online help has been clicked millions of times around the world.
For Martin Adam, who came to TU Darmstadt as a doctoral student in 2016 and is now writing his habilitation, Santos' seminars are a role model. The business informatics specialist has designed a master’s course called “Improving Wellbeing with Data Analytics” and which inspired many TU students in the summer semester. In his Zoom course, Adam combines questions of mental health with scientific knowledge, underpinned by data analysis. That seems to hit a nerve: "80 students in the first cycle would have been an enormous success," he says. But 113 students registered. Including not only prospective business IT specialists and engineers, but also matriculated students from subjects such as innovation management and entrepreneurship, students of general studies as well as guests from education and psychology.The reasons for this are the effects of the pandemic and the increasing pressure to succeed in studying. “However, many students also feel an urge to develop their personality,” says Adam.
From meditation to a diary
The TU scientist deals with the interface between social and technical phenomena in business informatics.
Mental health and the aspects of positive psychology have not only been an issue for the thirty-year-old since Corona.
"Mental health is playing an increasingly important role in society." A knowledge that he wanted to apply to everyday student life with his own course.
His initial question was: How can well-being be scientifically proven to improve?
“A gap in the previous range of courses,” he says.
Adam cooperates with the health management of the TU. Meditation and mindfulness exercises are part of his seminar. The business IT specialist sees himself as a mediator: “There is a lot of literature and knowledge on the subject of improving well-being. That's what I build my ideas on. ”In the first phase of his course, he encourages participants to journal and record things they are grateful for or problems that they think they have solved well. Findings that are later discussed in small groups and in plenary, with the support of technical aids and scientific methods.