Collaboration: Turku University of Applied Sciences

What kind of well-being solutions do university students need? This fall, we at MARKED had the pleasure of collaborating with Turku University of Applied Sciences, during which students had the opportunity to test our mobile application and carry out a task to plan its functions according to the needs of the target group.

One of MARKED's guiding principles is that services designed for students should be developed in collaboration with them. We believe that students are experts in expressing their needs and in co-developing services to best meet those needs. Therefore, we have been extremely pleased with the ongoing collaboration, where MARKED was introduced for the first time to university students at Turku University of Applied Sciences.

The collaboration was carried out as part of the Together Forward project at Turku University of Applied Sciences, during which students from various fields planned the possibilities of the MARKED application to support the well-being of university students and serve as a tool for community building. To mark the conclusion of the collaboration, students and project leaders visited Helsinki Education Hub, where we heard the results and ideas of the collaboration. We discussed and planned how MARKED could best serve the needs of university students, and as a result of the collaboration, we received valuable development ideas that touched on the functionalities, content, as well as features enabling peer support and community building among students.

An important observation from the collaboration was the need for functionalities that strengthen the sense of community among students through meaningful discussions and shared activities. We heard a great experience of how some of the students who received the task had used the materials provided by the application to initiate group discussions and gained insights that they are not alone in their thoughts or experiences.

We are excited to implement all the results and development ideas from the collaboration to better support the well-being of students!