“If you need a toilet break or want to get a coffee, it is normal to take a break. But if you need some fresh air, you get odd looks”, says Mariëlle Jonkers. Together with fellow students from the Experiential Design Landscapes course she got cracking on ‘making the campus healthier’ and having timely breaks is the subject they ended up with.
“We want to remove the social pressure to keep going on and on and on. If an increasing number of students needs a short break, it is a signal for the lecturer to insert a break.”

The ID students have developed a website which enables students to indicate their need for a break. Lecturers will see the numbers coming by via a tablet. Jonkers: “You can only indicate once that you need a break and of course it is still up to lecturers themselves whether they want to comply with the request.”

The students first tested their concept within ID and have now started in lecture room 2 of the Auditorium, because that is a place where many students come together. The lecturers have been duly informed in advance and students are alerted to it via QR codes. Jonkers says that so far students and lecturers alike find the idea ‘rather cool’.