Synthesising our target user and big idea

Point of View Statement:

John is consumed with stress over his workload and needs to take a break and clear his headspace, but surprisingly the feelings of guilt outweigh the perceived benefits.

Big Idea:

Our big idea is to help students to achieve an overall more positive and proactive university experience (and life) by building their emotional intelligence and resilience. We want to achieve this by a) convincing students of the necessity/possibility/desirability of having a work-life balance and b) facilitating this through a space or programme for regular and effectual study breaks.


University ethos? Lecturer involvement? Students contributing, getting involved in more than just their papers? Sharing, two-way dialogue - university as an experience - touchpoints - classroom, outside of classroom, uni breaks - it's the self-motivated, self-directed learning that we're interested in. We want people to be healthy and happy. Maybe a focus on enjoyment and learning rather than quantitative achievements? Self-satisfaction? Peer relationships, feedback? Safety net?

This is what world-class universities are doing - it's not great! The teaching is good but the other stuff needs work...

"[I]nstead of a normative commitment to independence, promoting greater equality requires a system of social support that will encourage and facilitate forms of social interaction that are not based on individual competitiveness."

"During the second term of the current government, there has been an evident shift ... in which the value of a university education is discussed primarily in economic terms - in its value to the individual in terms of lifetime earnings and value to the economy as a whole in terms of contributions to industrial growth."

"Students are to become customers in an educational market in which courses are differentiated by price. I searched the white paper almost in vain for any inkling that higher education might be about knowledge creation, the search for truth, the pursuit of scholarship or personal growth and self-discovery, let alone the recognition of its role in strengthening democracy though an educated citizenry. Instead, the dual role of the university proposed in the paper is to advance economic prosperity through utilitarian research and to promote social inclusion through widening access."

"Current practices have exacerbated the competitive, masculinist, long-hours culture of university departments in which individualized performances are now apparently, in the recent pay proposals, to be rewarded ... In this evolving university hierarchy, the discourse is dominated by how to be more competitive, ... rather than debates about how to produce a more congenial and supportive environment in universities or to challenge the dominant codes of cultural capital that reproduce a predominantly white, straight, male, middle-class body of university teachers." 

http://phg.sagepub.com/content/28/2/145.full.pdf+html - so interesting!