Tools to support student stress management

Spotligthers, an Erasmus+ program project (2018-2021) on the science of stress, has helped teachers and students better understand stress and acquire stress management techniques. The Spotlighters project brought together European experts in neuroscience, psychology, educational technology, and pedagogy to develop a series of open educational resources (OER) that introduce educators and students to the science of stress.

Metropolia University of Applied Sciences contributed to the collaborative design and development of the classroom lessons for high school and higher education levels, and piloted them in two rounds in the undergraduate courses at the School of Wellbeing.

Over 1000 students participated

From 2018 to 2021, the Spotlighters team organized learning activities with educators and students throughout Europe. Over a 40-month period, the consortium ran 30 sets of pilot lessons with university, high school, and primary school students. Over 1000 students directly participated in the classroom lessons during the project.

As result, plethora of resources are created to teach students about the stress response, stress mindsets, and how lifestyles affect levels of stress. A number of videos that guide students through practicing evidence-based self-regulatory techniques such as Mindfulness are available on YouTube.

“We coordinated the production of The Science of Stress & Self-Regulation Online Course, available in seven national languages and co-developed the Finnish version with the University of Helsinki. Ran two rounds of pilots at Metropolia's School of Wellbeing”, says project manager Hannu Markkanen. The mentioned course helps students learn about how stress can be helpful and harmful, how it causes changes in our bodies, and how we can learn to manage it. The international team of instructors in the course guide students through common stress management techniques that can be used by students for the rest of their lives.

Educators trained to utilize the tools

Teacher professional development workshops and symposiums for educators were held in five countries: Finland, Denmark, Spain, Portugal and Greece. Spotlighters provide two training activities for educators with the goal of preparing them to use the Spotlighters tools and materials with their students and with their peers.

In Finland, Helsinki University and Metropolia University of Applied Sciences collaborated to create the training workshops. Minna Huotilainen, professor of educational sciences at University of Helsinki, Cognitive Brain Research Unit, CICERO Learning Network and Eveliina Holmgren, Senior Lecturer at the School of Wellbeing, Metropolia University of Applied Sciences developed and piloted the Spotlighters Teacher Training Workshops.

After the project, all the OER resources are freely available for teachers and students of Metropolia. The independent use of online course is actively promoted through the Metropolia's student counselling network, as a tool to learn stress management. The integrated use in undergraduate programmes and in the studies of the Metropolia's Open University of Applied Sciences is planned.

Strong European collaboration

Spotlighters was coordinated by the Interactive and Distributed Technologies for Education (TIDE) research group of Universitat Pompeu Fabra’s Department of Information Technology and Communications. The project consortium included neuroscientists from Autonomous University of Barcelona and Cicero Learning at the University of Helsinki, researchers from the University of Western Macedonia (Greece) and Metropolia University of Applied Sciences of Helsinki (Finland), as well as social enterprises LOOP.bz (Denmark) Advancis (Portugal) and Boon (Portugal).

More information

Please find the Spotlighters' Open Educational Resources available online:

1. The Science of Stress & Self-Regulation Online Course is a self-paced, online course for high school and university students in multiple European languages (upf.edu)
2. The Spotlighters YouTube Channel features many types of videos created by Spotlighters in each of the project partner languages.
3. The Spotlighters Toolkit for Student Lessons helps teachers teach the lessons produced by Spotlighters (project website)
4. The Spotlighters Teacher Training Workshops are two 120-minute professional development workshops for educators (project website).
5. ClassMood App is a free social and emotional learning tool for teachers (upf.edu). It allows teachers to visualize a map of their student moods and discover mood changing activities for students. The tool helps educators teach students about emotion regulation and provides opportunities to introduce self-regulatory activities such as breathing exercises and cognitive reappraisal. The app is available in English, Spanish, Catalan, Greek, Portuguese, Finnish, and Danish.

Contact

Hannu Markkanen, researching lecturer, school of ICT (Metropolia's People Finder)