Important Note for the Summer Semester 2024
Due to personnel changes in the teaching staff in our department, we are not able to offer the module “Increasing Well-Being with Data Analytics” as usual this summer semester. We are trying to offer the module again from the summer semester of 2025, but cannot make a definitive commitment at this time.
Course Content
In this application-focused course, you will engage in a series of weekly challenges designed to demonstrably increase your own (subjective) well-being and build more productive habits using IT.
In preparation for these challenges, Dr. Martin Adam will
- compare widely held beliefs about well-being with findings from academic research, and ultimately falsify these beliefs.
- bring in theories and concepts from research in Information Systems and adjacent fields to explain what troublesome tendencies in human perception (i.e., biases) lead to these perceptions.
- present strategies to mitigate these troublesome tendencies.
- introduce new perceptions that, according to science, actually lead to better well-being.
- present scientifically accepted methods for integrating and sustaining these new perceptions into one's life over the long term.
This content and challenge will be supported by weekly exercises in which you will learn and independently apply the most relevant and application-oriented methods to empirical analysis (i.e., data analytics).
Overall, the course aims to provide you with the opportunity to develop into a happier individual based on scientifically recognized methods, so that you can use your potentials and competencies (“hard skills”) collected over the years in a scientifically proven way in your private and professional life and sustainably live them out in the long term.
Learning Outcomes
After the course, you will be able to
- name and understand
- which widespread perceptions regarding well-being are not compatible with academic research and thus rather not to be pursued if you want to become happier in the long run.
- which psychological effects (i.e., human biases and tendencies) lead to these widespread (wrong) perceptions.
- which strategies help against these tendencies.
- what goals should actually be pursued to become scientifically proven happier (especially the role of technology in influencing your well-being).
- how these new goals and related behavioral changes can be integrated and lived in everyday life to positively change behavior in the long run and thus find higher well-being.
- how these changes can be empirically measured and proven using basic statistics (especially with the help of data analytics).
- which topics and trends research (particularly Information Systems) and global players (e.g., SAP, Google and McKinsey) are currently dealing with and will deal with in the future in order to increase the well-being of individuals.
- apply and (empirically) analyze how scientifically recognized activities can be integrated into personal and professional life to increase and maintain your well-being in the long term.
- to look at life as a whole in a more positive way, so that you can use your potentials and competencies (“hard skills”) collected over the years in a scientifically proven way in your private and professional life and live them out in the long term.