My heart and I - Sparkling Science

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“My heart and I – Sparkling Science” is a two-year research project in which students of the ECOLE HBLW Güssing are working together with the FH Pinkafeld. The main focus is located on the evaluation of the pilot project “Together healthy in the district Oberwart”. The students work on methods of empirical social research and gain experience in concern with the tertiary education.

The University of Applied Sciences Burgenland organizes the project „My heart and I - Sparkling Science“ in cooperation with the ECOLE HBLW Güssing. The project lasts two years from September 2010 to August 2012. The main intervention is the qualitative process evaluation for the pilot project “Together healthy in the district Oberwart” in the settings “school” and “community”. 38 students of the third and fourth class of the ECOLE are involved in the sparkling science project. Over the two years they arrange health interventions for their school.

In the first project phase the focus is on knowledge transfer in the following topics:

• health promotion in different settings
• cardiovascular health
• evaluation of health promotion projects
• scientific work
• empirical social research

The methods that will be used to inform the students are project work and peer-group-teaching. After knowledge transfer the students use techniques of empirical social research. They develop a standardised questionnaire with qualitative and quantitative methods of data collecting. Thenthey conduct telephone interviews. Afterwards the students are responsible for data input in the SPSS software.

In the second project phase the students plan and organize health promotion projects in their school for teachers and students. They are supervised by scientific officers of the University of Applied Sciences Burgenland. Moreover the students have to work on specialised papers. They get also help from the scientific officers.

Project targets:

• personal and social changes in health promotion,
• increase the qualification of young academics,
• usage of peer-group-teaching through developing knowledge resources and capacity building,
• work on sustainable networks between ECOLE Güssing and University of Applied Sciences Burgenland,
• transparency between secondary and tertiary education,
• promotion of special needs,
• development of modern didactical techniques (for instance work on projects, discovery-led work),
• autonomous work on specialised papers.

Project team:
Mag. Karin Schweiger (project leader)
Mag. Florian Schnabel (responsible for methodical part)
KatrinKalchbrenner, BA (scientific officer)
Nadine Mittl, BA (scientific officer)

More information:
ECOLE Güssing (Projektpartnerschule): http://www.ecole.or.at/node/233
Sparkling Science: http://www.sparklingscience.at/de/projekte/502-mein-herz-und-ich-gemeinsam-gesund-/