Be mindful!

Future of Education 2016 – brilliant ideas around the theme of mindfulness

Future of Education is an annual competitive project of the BSP Business School Berlin, the MSH Medical School Hamburg and the MSB Medical School Berlin and other universities. The overall aim is to elaborate on creative solutions for teaching and learning in the digital world of tomorrow. There are no limits for creativity. What counts is purely the outcome. More than 50 participants took part in this year’s Future of Education programme.

This year, teams elaborated on the topic »Higher/Faster/Further? How do I learn and teach mindfulness?«. They were asked to explore how teaching and learning strategies need to adjust to the societal demands in an efficiency-prone world without disregarding the crucial aspects of human interaction. We put emphasis on interdisciplinary approaches, creativity and teamwork: students were asked to unpack, beyond the standard curriculum and with co-students enrolled in other degrees, and to critically reflect the topic of mindfulness.

The project started with a full day workshop in April at MSH Medical School in Hamburg and was followed by two months of a developmental phase in mixed teams under the supervision and guidance of allocated mentors. Final presentations were delivered to a public audience in June in the Siemens Villa in Berlin. The jury, consisting of mentors, assessed the presentations. One of the mentors, Stefan Peter (Founder of the Forum Mediation & Neuroscience) even took part in this event via skype from New York, to give his vote as a jury member.

We thank all the participants of Future of Education 2016 for this valuable experience.  At this point, we would also like to express our gratitude to Mrs. Renken-Olthoff for the financial support of this project.

• Julia Göhler, Programme leader Medical Pedagogy at MSB Medical School Berlin
• Stefan Peter, Founder of the Forum Meditation & Neuroscience
• Kees Spijker, Director New School Amsterdam, Communication expert
• Gisbert Straden, Change-Consultant
• Jost de Jager, Strategy consultant,  Director DSKB

Mindfulness in Management processes:

How can managers maintain performance capacities and be protected from burnout and similar stressors, using the approach of mindfulness inspections?

The solution:

An app titled Observant Management Concept (OMC); managers can assess their individual mental health status via different modules through stress-tests on mindfulness and through health checks. A traffic light system indicates tendencies. Red means: Stop. You need to change something!

Mentor: Gisbert Straden

Mindfulness at University level:

How can we integrate mindfulness into our university life?

The solution:

A toolbox consisting of different exercises, titled »die 8 für 8samkeit«. This group developed an entire module consisting of individual- and group exercises to integrate mindfulness into our everyday life in an easy and accessible way. The concept of positive psychology forms the basis of this module and as such views the student as a whole with his/her individual capacities and skills.

Mentor: Julia Göhler

Creating mindfulness in private schools: How can mindfulness address the different types of learners?

The solution: an app with the claim »Let Your Quality Grow!«. This app identifies your personal type of learning through successive steps. It creates an individual time table and a character-based interaction with other co-students. The result is a well-defined and in-depth mindfulness system that responds to the different skills and talents of the individual.

Mentor: Kees Spijker

Mindfulness in personal development:

How can a professional career be cultivated and fostered through mindfulness skills and techniques?

The solution: An algorithm to construe personalized measures for better well-being and performance, based on technically supported mindfulness analysis procedures. The holistic analysis system combines physical data, fitness- and health data, data on everyday lifestyle behaviour and other data into an individual companion.

Mentor: Jost de Jager

Mindfulness in public spaces:

How can we incorporate mindfulness into our everyday life and how can we apply this concept for problem-solving skills?

The solution:

To integrate mindfulness as an inherent part into your own life and to create an increased awareness for our environment and for the people around us. In collaboration with the Foundation for Meditation on Neurosciences, this group developed a mindfulness exercise module, to make mindfulness practices accessible to anyone – also to beginners.

Mentor: Stefan Peter

Coming to a decision on the best presentations and ideas was particularly difficult this year. All ideas were of high-quality, very sophisticated and were presented in a professional manor. Therefore we awarded the 1st price twice: both groups BeeAware and Getting Started will jointly take part in a sailing trip and will approach the topic of mindfulness from a very different angle.