Collaboration, research and development

Research Behind The Student Compass

Since its inception in 2012, the Student Compass program has been at the forefront of student well-being research. Developed at the University of Jyväskylä, the program has undergone continuous, rigorous scientific evaluation, leading to a growing body of evidence demonstrating its effectiveness. Our mission has been clear from the start: to create accessible, evidence-based mental well-being support tailored specifically for university students.

To date, over 1300 students have taken part in the coach-supported version of the program, with guidance provided by more than 350 trained psychology students. These coaches, supervised and trained in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) and behavioral analysis, offer structured, low-threshold support—both face-to-face and online. This unique training opportunity also helps psychology trainees develop practical skills while making a meaningful impact on the student community.

The Student Compass can be used independently or with varying levels of support, including one-on-one and group coaching, or more intensive guidance from university specialists, like psychologists. The program is available to Finnish and international students at the University of Jyväskylä. While students benefit from flexible participation options, our research has particularly focused on the supported model, which combines digital modules with personalized feedback, face-to-face meetings, and reflective tasks.

What the Research Shows

Our studies—including randomized controlled trials—show consistently promising outcomes. Participation in Student Compass significantly improves emotional, social, and psychological well-being, self-acceptance, mindfulness skills, and overall life satisfaction, while also reducing stress, symptoms of depression, and anxiety.

Research doesn’t stop at effectiveness. We are also investigating the mechanisms behind these outcomes: What type of feedback helps most? What level of personalization is effective? How does coach's support impact progress? Our studies have even employed AI-assisted text analysis to explore these dimensions more deeply.

Expanding Horizons

The Student Compass has been piloted in Germany, Italy, and English-speaking settings, with strong early results. Our reach continues to expand through national and international collaborations with institutions like the University of Helsinki, Tampere University, JAMK University of Applied Sciences, and Leipzig University, among others.

In cooperation with Annie Advisor, we are currently developing an AI-based chatbot prototype built on the core material of the Student Compass program. This cutting-edge AI future integration aims to deliver timely and personalized well-being support, making the program’s benefits even more widely accessible for students.

Below you will find a list of ongoing and past collaborations. In the following sections 'Publications' and 'Conference presentations', you will find updated lists of all known publications and conference presentations based on the Student Compass program.

Supporting Student Mental Well-Being Through Scalable AI Solutions (2024- ongoing)  

University students are experiencing increasing levels of stress, while access to timely support remains limited. To help address this challenge, we have been developing a new AI-powered chatbot prototype in collaboration with our partner company, Annie Advisor, a Finnish startup specializing in scalable chatbot solutions for education. The chatbot is designed to offer students a safe, accessible, and user-friendly way to strengthen their mental wellbeing skills.

Built on the evidence-based Student Compass program and grounded in the principles of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), the prototype enables personalized, low-threshold support through interactive, conversational guidance. Annie Advisor’s technology is already used in diverse educational settings, making it well-suited to support large student populations. By combining psychological expertise with cutting-edge AI, this project aims to promote academic success and mental well-being, anytime, anywhere. This project is funded by the prestigious Tools Competition, an international program supporting groundbreaking educational technology innovations. Annie Advisor is the first Finnish startup to receive this competitive funding, underlining the potential and global relevance of the solution.  

EU Hori­zon Eu­rope Pro­gram: MSCA Doc­tor­al Net­works (2023–2027)

We were part­ners in the Marie Skłodows­ka-Curie Ac­tions (MSCA): De­vel­op­ing Tal­ents, Ad­vanc­ing Re­search doc­tor­al train­ing pro­ject un­der the EU’s Hori­zon Eu­rope frame­work (2023–2027). Fo­cus area: Un­der­stand­ing e-men­tal health over the lifes­pan and across vul­ner­a­ble groups Our con­sor­tium in­clud­ed uni­ver­si­ties from across Eu­rope, with Leipzig Uni­ver­si­ty serv­ing as the main co­or­di­na­tor of the ap­pli­ca­tion. The fund­ing ap­pli­ca­tion in­clud­ed three years of fund­ing (2024–2027) to hire a doc­tor­al re­searcher whose work will fo­cus specif­i­cal­ly on the Stu­dent Com­pass pro­gram and its re­search.  

Col­lab­o­ra­tion with Tam­pere Uni­ver­si­ty (2021–on­go­ing)

Tam­pere Uni­ver­si­ty has been pi­lot­ing the Stu­dent Com­pass pro­gram since May 2021 and holds li­cense rights to im­ple­ment the pro­gram with their stu­dents. They have de­vel­oped in­de­pen­dent sup­port mod­els tai­lored to their in­sti­tu­tion­al con­text and stu­dent needs. In ad­di­tion to im­ple­ment­ing the pro­gram, Tam­pere Uni­ver­si­ty has con­duct­ed their own re­search, yield­ing very promis­ing re­sults re­gard­ing stu­dent well-be­ing and pro­gram ef­fec­tive­ness.You can find re­lat­ed stud­ies and out­comes list­ed in the Pub­li­ca­tions sec­tion.



Press re­lease: Tam­pere and Jyväskylä uni­ver­si­ties co­op­er­ate to im­prove stu­dents' men­tal health 


Col­lab­o­ra­tion with JAMK Uni­ver­si­ty of Ap­plied Sci­ences (2017 & Edu­Fu­tu­ra, 2019–2021)

Edu­Fu­tu­ra Jyväskylä is a cen­ter of ex­cel­lence in learn­ing, re­search, and de­vel­op­ment that brings to­geth­er in­sti­tu­tions to cre­ate fu­ture-ori­ent­ed ed­u­ca­tion­al so­lu­tions. Its mem­bers in­clude the Uni­ver­si­ty of Jyväskylä and JAMK Uni­ver­si­ty of Ap­plied Sci­ences. We have col­lab­o­rat­ed with JAMK staff to of­fer the Finnish-lan­guage ver­sion of the Stu­dent Com­pass pro­gram to their stu­dents. An ini­tial pi­lot was con­duct­ed ear­li­er, and be­tween 2019–2021, sev­er­al fol­low-up pi­lot stud­ies were car­ried out. The goal has been to cre­ate a mod­el in which pro­fes­sion­als oth­er than psy­chol­o­gists—such as stu­dent coun­selors and ed­u­ca­tors—can also ben­e­fit from us­ing Stu­dent Com­pass as part of their guid­ance toolk­it. More info on the stud­ies, check our 'Pub­li­ca­tions' sec­tion.


Col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Fac­ul­ty of In­for­ma­tion Tech­nol­o­gy, Uni­ver­si­ty of Jyväskylä (2019)

Pre­lim­i­nary re­sults of this study were pre­sent­ed at the 9th World Con­fer­ence of Cog­ni­tive and Be­hav­ioral Ther­a­pies in July 2019. The re­search was award­ed the con­fer­ence’s Best Poster Award by the sci­en­tif­ic com­mit­tee.



Rä­sä­nen, P., Nyr­hi­nen, R., Tol­va­nen, A., Lap­pa­lai­nen, R.(2019). What kind of on­li­ne coach sup­port is help­ful in re­ducing psyc­ho­lo­gical di­stress in a blen­ded Accep­tance and Com­mit­ment the­ra­py in­ter­ven­tion? Re­sults from an RCT stu­dy for uni­ver­si­ty stu­dents that emplo­yed Ar­ti­ficial In­tel­li­gence (A.I.) text ana­ly­sis. World Con­fe­rence of Cog­ni­ti­ve Be­ha­vio­ral The­ra­pies, Ber­lin 2019. Pos­ter pre­sen­ta­tion.



Ab­stract: The­re is li­mi­ted re­search exa­mi­ning the ac­ti­ve com­po­nents that may cont­ri­bu­te to the ef­fec­ti­ve­ness of In­ter­net in­ter­ven­tions. One subs­tan­tial com­po­nent in gui­ded in­ter­ven­tions is the feed­back gi­ven to the clients. Litt­le is known as to what kind of feed­back would be ef­fec­ti­ve and use­ful in treat­ment outco­mes. The pre­sent stu­dy explo­red the role of pro­vi­ding on­li­ne writ­ten feed­back from coac­hes on clients’ outco­mes. ACT trai­ned psyc­ho­lo­gy stu­dents of­fe­red sup­port as coac­hes (N=48; 87,5% fe­ma­le, M=26 years) to uni­ver­si­ty stu­dents (N = 123; 83,7% fe­ma­le, M=25 years), who were ran­dom­ly as­sig­ned to two groups that both recei­ved th­ree face-to-face ses­sions and an on­li­ne 5-mo­du­le ACT-ba­sed pro­gram. Group A (iAC­TA, N=62) recei­ved per­so­na­lized, in­di­vi­dual­ly-tai­lo­red writ­ten feed­back and group B (iACTB, N=61) recei­ved semi-struc­tu­red writ­ten feed­back with mi­ni­mal per­so­na­liza­tion op­tions. Par­tici­pants’ texts from the pro­gram’s week­ly ho­mework as­sign­ments as well as coac­hes' feed­back were ana­lyzed with ar­ti­ficial in­tel­li­gence (AI) tools. Par­tici­pants in both groups had sig­ni­ficant gains in psyc­ho­lo­gical well-be­ing, psyc­ho­lo­gical flexi­bi­li­ty and mind­ful­ness skills. Percei­ved stress and symp­toms of depres­sion were sig­ni­ficant­ly re­duced. The length of the coach's feed­back did not have an ef­fect on treat­ment outco­mes. In both groups, feed­back that was rich, di­ver­se, and tar­ge­ting the par­tici­pant’s reflec­tions was as­socia­ted with a sig­ni­ficant re­duc­tion of stress and depres­sion. The dif­fe­rence was lar­ger for the semi-struc­tu­red group (iACTB) for stress outco­mes. The implica­tions and li­mi­ta­tions of the fin­dings, as well as recom­men­da­tions for fu­tu­re re­search, are discus­sed.


Col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Fac­ul­ty of Med­i­cine, Uni­ver­si­ty of Helsin­ki (2018 & 2021)

In 2018, we col­lab­o­rat­ed with the Fac­ul­ty of Med­i­cine at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Helsin­ki on a joint re­search pro­ject ex­am­in­ing the ben­e­fits of mind­ful­ness skills for stu­dent well-be­ing and stress man­age­ment.

Com­pa­ri­son of face-to-face and on­li­ne mind­ful­ness in­ter­ven­tions among healthca­re pro­fes­sio­nal stu­dents in Fin­land: A ran­do­mized cont­rol­led tri­al - Saa­ra Repo, Mar­ko Elo­vai­nio, Eeva Pyö­rä­lä, Ma­rian­ne Ho­lo­pai­nen, Pa­na­jio­ta Rä­sä­nen, Tii­na Pau­nio

Back­ground: Pre­vious stu­dies have shown that both face-to-face and on­li­ne mind­ful­ness trai­ning re­duces stress and en­hances well-be­ing in un­der­gra­dua­te stu­dents (Ga­lan­te et al. 2018, Spij­ker­man et al. 2015). The evi­dence concer­ning the ef­fec­ti­ve­ness of mind­ful­ness in­ter­ven­tions among me­dical stu­dents is mixed. The aim of this stu­dy was to test whet­her two ty­pes of mind­ful­ness in­ter­ven­tions, face-to-face trai­ning, and in­ter­net-ba­sed trai­ning could en­hance the stu­dents’ well-be­ing. Sum­ma­ry of work A ran­do­mized cont­rol­led tri­al in un­der­gra­dua­te stu­dents was con­duc­ted at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Hel­sin­ki. We di­vi­ded the vo­lun­ta­ry stu­dents into th­ree groups 1) cont­rol group (n=40), 2) face-to-face trai­ning group (n=40) and 3) in­ter­net-ba­sed trai­ning group (n=22). The po­ten­tial well-be­ing outco­mes were mea­su­red th­ree ti­mes, at the ba­se­li­ne, post-in­ter­ven­tion and af­ter a four months fol­low-up us­ing the CORE-OM34 and its five do­mains (well-be­ing, symp­toms, func­tio­ning, risk, non-risk). 

Sum­ma­ry of re­sults: We rec­rui­ted 102 stu­dents (74 fe­ma­le, 26 male, and two ot­her) from all the five stu­dy pro­gram­mes of the facul­ty. In the ba­se­li­ne, 28 % of the par­tici­pants ex­pe­rienced qui­te a lot or a lot of stress. Eight-week in­ter­ven­tions were con­duc­ted in Oc­to­ber and No­vem­ber in 2018. In the face-to-face group, 95 % and the in­ter­net-ba­sed group 81 % comple­ted the cour­se. Near­ly all (97%) of the face-to-face group and the in­ter­net-ba­sed group (93%) would recom­mend the cour­se for ot­hers. The lon­ger-term ef­fect will be exa­mi­ned by com­pa­ring the CORE-OM34 re­sults af­ter the in­ter­ven­tion and in a fol­low up af­ter four months (April 2019). Discus­sion and Con­clu­sions Par­tici­pants were very com­mit­ted to both in­ter­ven­tions and ex­pe­rienced them use­ful. Our stu­dy-de­sign con­tains not only im­me­dia­te but also the fol­low-up outco­mes of the in­ter­ven­tion. Ba­sed on the­se re­sults, the Facul­ty will deci­de whet­her the stu­dents will be of­fe­red mind­ful­ness cour­ses in the fu­tu­re and what type of trai­ning would be the most sui­table. Take-home Mes­sa­ges Stress le­vels among the stu­dents of healthca­re pro­fes­sions are high.

Our in­ter­ven­tion stu­dy on the two ty­pes of mind­ful­ness cour­ses pro­vi­des va­luable in­for­ma­tion for tho­se who are at the out­set of de­ve­lo­ping stress ma­na­ge­ment trai­ning for stu­dents.



More info about the study (In Finnish):
1) Repo, S., Renko­nen, R., & Pau­nio, T. (2020). Ti­etoisu­us­taidot aut­ta­vat stress­in hallinnas­sa Blog about the study