Students at our university can take advantage of the psychosocial counseling services offered by the 'Studentenwerk' (student union) in Dresden. In the project groups led by Lea Schneider, Caja Jannasch, Aaron Thiel, Maxi Raymund, Anne Keskowski, and Jacqueline Quosdorf, proposals were developed to provide students with even broader access to helpful information:

• Providing a knowledge base with recommendations and methods on the topics of self-management and self-care, as well as coping with stress and overwhelming demands.
• Providing a discussion forum where students can seek advice (anonymously, if desired) and support one another.
• The option to schedule online appointments with counseling staff.

Our university’s sports programs also contribute to students’ (mental) health. The project group led by Romy Wolf, Selina Henker, and John Ledzbor has developed an idea to integrate small athletic “challenges” directly into the class schedule: Students can use an app to sign up for group challenges (e.g., 20 minutes of yoga, meditation, etc.) that take place between classes / courses in rooms specifically designated for this purpose in the academic buildings. Participation earns points that can be redeemed for attractive rewards.

To make it easier for students to find housing, Theresa Lidzba, Franziska Thiemig, and Josefine Radtke developed a concept for a platform that presents dormitory rooms alongside housing listings from other landlords who also want to reach the student demographic.

The app idea by Marvin Hein, Sophia Thomas, Paula Sebastian, and Nele Schumacher ensures that daily life in the dorm runs smoothly. They can easily imagine the Studierendenwerk providing a dedicated dorm app to handle contractual and organizational matters related to dorm living, including, for example, repair requests from tenants, announcements from the landlord, or contract changes.

Alina Hanisch, Vivien Seifert, and Paul Becker envision an online marketplace by students for students—for study materials, home furnishings, groceries, rideshares, and much more. Exclusive access for students at the university is intended to increase security, ensure fair prices, and make it significantly easier to find suitable offers.

Students with artistic ambitions stand to benefit from the idea of a regional platform where artists, event organizers, and venue providers can network with one another (Jule Borghardt and Lena Wallwitz).

The Matrix service provides all university members with a way to communicate in chat rooms. Students Christin Scholz, Luise Kieschnick, and Maria Kriegel wondered how they could encourage significantly greater use of the service across the university. It is believed that structuring the Matrix server in advance could provide users with better guidance. The group’s idea aims to consistently map the university’s structure virtually through “Spaces” and the rooms contained within them. This could look something like this, for example:

• Spaces are created for the individual degree programs.
• Each Space has a uniform room structure that can be flexibly expanded. For example, rooms could be designated for individual cohorts, individual modules, and cross-cohort interaction. Discussions can take place within the rooms in topic-specific threads.

It would be beneficial to distinguish between rooms where students interact exclusively with one another and module-specific rooms where interaction with instructors is the primary focus. To a certain extent, central administration of such a virtual representation of the university is necessary to maintain the room structure and regulate access to specific rooms.

Tatjana Demidova, Claudia Kaube, and Amelia Morawski reached similar conclusions. Proposals were made to expand the university app to include a forum for students and prospective students. To further reduce the load on the university’s email system, academic surveys—which are often sent via email distribution lists—could also be consolidated within the app. A gamification concept could potentially attract even more participants to the surveys.

Another project group (Nadine Hilbert and Vincent Großer) also addressed the topic of an exchange forum. Their focus was on creating a platform for students to connect before, during, or after a semester abroad.