How can students adequately fight stress under increasing requirements? The guidebook “Rückenwind. Was Studis gegen Stress tun können” (Tailwind, What Students Can Do to Fight Stress) by KIT’s House of Competence (HoC) for the first time provides tips extending beyond individual disciplines based on studies and experience in science, therapy, and medicine. The book will be presented by the editors at the workshop “Studieren nach Bologna – Kompetenzen und Konsequenzen” (Studying after Bologna – Competences and Consequences) on December 06, 18 hrs, at the Audimax on KIT Campus South.
Representatives of the media are cordially invited. Please be so kind as to register using the form enclosed.
Every fifth student in Germany discontinues studies. One of the reasons: The experience of not meeting the requirements of univer-sity studies. In the new bachelor programs in particular, students complain about a high workload. The question of whether these programs overstrain the students still is discussed controversially. By an electronic diary study, scientists of HoC studied the relation-ship between workload and stress of bachelor students at KIT. The book “Rückenwind. Was Studis gegen Stress tun können” (Tailwind. What Students Can Do to Fight Stress) presents first results of this study. Moreover, the publication deals with the “postponing of work” during studies and with framework conditions for a healthy university. It presents findings relating to stress obtained by psychological, sports science, social empirical, and other disciplines. For a better understanding, these findings are complemented by interviews with the scientists. In addition to theory, a number of practical tips are given, i.e. suggestions with respect to time management, exercises for deliberate breathing to improve concentration, and information on the importance of exercise to psychic health.
The book is based on contributions to the Karlsruhe Stress Days that have been organized by HoC since 2008 and in the course of which symposiums and workshops offer the possibility of training and reflecting as to how stress can be managed and the perfor-mance maintained. The cooperation partner of the Karlsruhe Stress Days and in editing the guidebook is the Techniker Krankenkasse (TK). According to the 2011 Health Report of this health insurance company, most of the medicines prescribed to students are sub-stances to treat the nervous system. According to this study, the proportion of students treated with antidepressants has increased by more than 40% since 2006.
HoC that was established at KIT in 2007 is the only institution at a German university that is not affiliated to a university department and pursues interdisciplinary competence research and develop-ment.
The guidebook of 115 pages with contributions of 26 authors will soon be available for downloading at no costs: www.hoc.kit.edu/rueckenwind
“Studying after Bologna – Competences and Consequences”: Workshop on December 06 and 07
The guidebook on stress will be presented by the editors on Tues-day, December 06, at the workshop “Studying after Bologna - Com-petences and Consequences”, 18 hrs, Audimax (Strasse am Forum 1, KIT Campus South). The workshop will be organized by HoC together with the KIT Department of the Humanities and Social Sci-ences. At this interdisciplinary workshop on the reality of studies and competence development under Bologna conditions, KIT scien-tists will report among others about changing habits of media use and empirical results regarding the time management of students. In addition, they will present new technical methods of measuring the psycho-physiological stress of students in everyday life.
Detailed workshop program: www.hoc.kit.edu/studieren_nach_bologna.php
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