The decline in the well-being of university students and increased mental disorders experienced by students pursuing higher education have become a serious issue around the world [1-3]. In the United States, over 50% of the college students have a psychiatric disorder and over 60% have experienced serious anxiety [4]. In Finland, one-third of the students have experienced mental problems [5]. At the same time, there has been an increase in student dropout rates and study times have increased. As in most European countries, in Finland, 3 important aims to solve this problem have been added to the agenda: students’ completion of degrees, completion in a reasonable period, and reducing student dropout [6]. In addition, the demands of today’s workforce life require excellent life-long learning skills in students and the ability to solve complex and multidisciplinary problems under heavy workloads and stress. Thus, there is a huge discrepancy between the demands set for students and students’ well-being. Obviously, there is a need for services that would enhance students’ well-being, especially in the initial stages of studying due to the transition challenges being faced [7]. A growing body of evidence demonstrates that social and emotional skills greatly affect academic performance [8] and students’ studying and learning are related to their well-being [9]. Furthermore, there is evidence that many students encounter troubles in their learning and studying processes [10,11], and in higher education, the emphasis should also be paid to supporting students by considering both their well-being as well as their study skills and life-long learning skills [12]. Thus, effective ways to support students’ well-being and their ability to study are highly needed. Our aim was to describe a course that was developed to support students’ well-being as well as their study skills at university and to describe the plan for how to explore the effects of this course on students’ learning and well-being. This course was based on fostering students’ psychological flexibility and study skills, and peer support and reflection were chosen as the central pedagogical tools to support the development of these aspects.

Well-being is not easy to define because there are many definitions and traditions and things to consider when thinking about well-being [13]. One prominent model of well-being defines well-being as having the following 3 parts [14]: emotional, psychological, and social well-being. Emotional well-being can be described as positive emotions toward life or good satisfaction in life. Psychological well-being relates to how individuals view themselves as functioning in life and it can be conceptualized though processes such as self-acceptance, sense of mastery and competence, positive relationships with others, feeling of personal growth or development, sense of goal-directedness in life, and autonomy [15]. Social well-being also refers to positive functioning but from a social perspective and it can be understood from 5 dimensions: social coherence, social acceptance, social actualization, social contribution, and social integration [16]. In this course, we aim to promote all 3 aspects of well-being, namely, emotional, psychological, and social well-being by practicing and developing one’s psychological flexibility.

Psychological flexibility describes people’s ability to be connected with the present and to regulate their emotions and actions despite the unpleasant feelings or thoughts they might have [17-19] and further, to take value-based actions. People with high psychological flexibility act according to their own values and accept their negative thoughts, emotions, and sensations rather than avoid them and deal with these negative emotions and thoughts by opening up to them and observing them from another perspective mindfully [20]. The origin of psychological flexibility lies in acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) [17,18] and is based on the ACT theory of psychopathology. Promoting psychological flexibility has been shown to improve all aspects of well-being: emotional, psychological, and social well-being [18,21]. It is related also to physical well-being as it is negatively related to experiences of, for example, sleeping problems [22] and eating disorders [23]. Research and meta-analyses have shown that psychological flexibility can reduce depression and anxiety [24,25] and has been found to play a central role in stress management [26] and life management [27], low quality of life, stress management and well-being [28,29], as well as self-compassion [30]. It has also been shown to have a central role in improving performance, well-being, and results in the workplace [31,32]. Some ACT-based interventions have been made in higher education and they have shown to be successful in improving students’ well-being and stress levels [21,32-35] as well as their psychological flexibility [21]. Furthermore, ACT-based web-based interventions have been found beneficial in a meta-analysis of comparison between face-to-face and web-based interventions as there were no differences in the effectiveness, and thus, strong support has been brought up for the adoption of web-based psychological interventions [36].

Psychological flexibility is established through 6 overlapping core processes, which are strengthened in ACT. These core processes are acceptance, cognitive defusion, being present, self as context, values, and committed action [18]. Acceptance is the opposite of experimental avoidance and means “the active embrace of those private events occasioned by one’s history without unnecessary attempts to change their frequency of form” [18]. Acceptance is not a matter of tolerance but rather, it supports value-based actions and exploration of feelings, memories, and thoughts from an observer perspective [37]. Cognitive defusion represents the process or techniques through which one’s relationship to these negative thoughts is altered and the ability to look at one’s own thoughts as separate parts of internal behavior and not consider them to be truth about the world or oneself [38]. Being present relates to continuous contact with a range of events or thoughts as they occur, emphasizing the ongoing process of defused and nonjudgmental description of thoughts [18]. Being present comprises seeing oneself as a context or a container of one’s experiences and thoughts, and thus, seeing these thoughts as being separate from the self [17]. Values are the foundation for fostering psychological flexibility, and value-based action and behavior are necessary to life satisfaction and experience of a meaningful life [36,39]. Values are also an important part of psychological flexibility as they offer guidance in terms of what behaviors are likely to lead to long-term satisfaction and experience of meaningfulness in life, which is an explicit aim in ACT [18]. The sixth aspect of flexibility, that is, committed action, leads to a value-emphasized life through taking value-based actions, instead of actions motivated by avoidance of negative thoughts [18]. Psychological flexibility has also a big role in university studies. It has been shown to be positively related to positive emotions in learning [40], integration into studying [41], self-regulation [42,43], and study progression [39,40]. Recent pilot studies have indicated that the theory of psychological flexibility is the core process in explaining procrastination in the higher education context [43,44] and it has also been shown to be particularly important for students who are at higher risk of academic failure [45]. Thus, the importance of psychological flexibility is evident in the university context. For this reason, all its 6 processes will be promoted and practiced in our course in order to foster the development of psychological flexibility.

In addition to psychological flexibility, research has shown that the deep approach to learning, that is, deep level processing in meaningful learning, is related to better learning outcomes [46,47]. However, recent research has pointed out that the deep approach to learning is not enough if the students are not organized in their studying [11,48]. Thus, the role of organized studying in significant in successful studying at a university [49-51]. Organized studying includes good time-management and self-regulation skills. Research has shown that it is possible to promote students’ time-management skills through interventions in which students learn and practice organizational skills [52,53]. Furthermore, research has shown that students’ approaches to learning are related to students’ well-being at the university, thereby showing that poor study skills can lead to a risk of study-related burnout in studies [9] and further, time allocation to important activities is a central part in achieving a meaningful life [54]. For these reasons, it would be important to support students’ time-management skills in order to improve their studying as well as to help students to allocate time better to things that are important to them. As deep approach to learning is related to better achievement as well as better well-being, it is utmost important to enhance both students’ time-management skills as well as their deep-level learning.

In summary, both psychological flexibility and study skills, including good time-management skills, are needed to foster university students’ well-being and studying. Thus, our intervention course is based on practicing both these aspects. Two central tools to foster these aspects during the course are reflection and peer support. Reflection has a central role during this course because reflection supports learning, and deeper and critical reflection is related to deeper learning, and further, to better learning outcomes [55]. In addition, research has shown that peer support is related to successful study progression and it is a central factor to enhancing studying at the university [51]. Peer support has also been found to be important in increasing well-being [56].

Our aim was to develop a course to support students in being successful in their studies by supporting different aspects of well-being (physical, emotional, social, and psychological) as well as their study skills and further, to study the effects of this course. The central process to support these aims is to support the development of psychological flexibility as it has been shown to have positive effects on all aspects of well-being as well as learning and studying in higher education. We will now describe the course in more detail and the experimental study design with a control group for studying the course.

An optional 8-week ACT-based web-based course was developed on the Moodle web-based platform and was completed online. This course was designed so that students do weekly assignments independently, reflect the themes of the course in small groups, and give and receive peer feedback of each other’s assignments. The course is suitable for Bachelor and Master level students and can be easily implemented to curricula. The teacher’s role in this course is to facilitate students’ progress during the course and monitor the group discussions and students’ assignments. The teachers also meet the students online in the course and give video instructions to the module’s themes and assignments. The teachers need to be familiar with the process of psychological flexibility as well as study skills to guide students properly and thus, training has been given to the teachers.

This intervention course consists of 8 modules, each module lasting for 1 week (Figure 1). The course was developed to last for 1 study period. In the University of Helsinki, there are 4 study periods in 1 academic year, each period lasting for 8 weeks. Modules support the development of psychological flexibility and study skills. Each module focuses on to 1 or 2 processes of psychological flexibility. The processes are parallel to each other [17] but some processes are emphasized more in some of the modules. Each module includes video and text introductions to the themes of the week—individual experimental and reflective assignments—in which participants are asked to write down their experiences and reflections. In addition, small group discussions about the themes are held every week. We have developed introduction videos and materials for every week and part of the exercises and the assignments ourselves, but the exercises targeted to improve psychological flexibility are based on the work that has been done by Hayes [18] and a Finnish ACT psychologist Arto Pietikäinen who has also helped developing the course. Next, we present these modules in more detail.