Let them flourish: enhancing higher education students’ well-being

Student well-being in higher education is receiving increasing attention. This is a
good development, partly because well-being is related to being able to study successfully.
Using the Job Demands-Resources model as a theoretical foundation, this dissertation investigates the well-being and promotion of well-being of students in general and honours students in particular, aiming to answer the research question: What personal resources promote higher education students’ well-being and how can these personal resources be enhanced by education?

Exploratory interviews with honours students investigated which personal resources they believe are important for achieving success. Path analysis was then used to investigate which personal resources are most strongly associated with levels of engagement and stress of students. The systematic review that followed described, from 123 included studies, the characteristics of interventions to promote well-being, the underlying theories, the effects of interventions and possible factors influencing effectiveness. Finally, educational design principles are formulated for designing interventions to (further) develop four personal resources of honours students; self-efficacy, optimism, inquiry mindedness, and self-regulation.

It is recommended that, based on the findings, further educational design research is conducted to both design effective interventions to develop students' personal resources and further develop the associated theory. In this way, increasingly evidence-based work can be done to promote student well-being.