Abstract:

Student emotional well-being has become a key factor in academic success, retention and competence development in higher education. In highly demanding STEM programmes, sustained workload, fragmented course coordination and performance pressure may lead to increased levels of academic burnout and reduced engagement. This paper presents the design, implementation and impact evaluation of a coordinated educational innovation project aimed at promoting emotional sustainability and preventing burnout among undergraduate students in Biotechnology and in the double degree in Biotechnology and Agri-Food and Rural Engineering at the Universitat Politècnica de València (Spain).

The project adopted a mixed-methods approach combining quantitative assessment tools based on the Maslach Burnout and Utrecht Engagement theoretical models with qualitative data collected through focus groups and guided reflective activities. This comprehensive framework enabled an in-depth diagnosis of students’ emotional status, perceived workload distribution and development of transversal competences linked to resilience, teamwork and adaptive learning.

Results obtained from the intervention highlight the relevance of emotional factors in academic performance. Approximately 65% of students reported medium to high emotional exhaustion, while over 40% showed moderate levels of academic disengagement, mainly associated with perceived overload and limited coordination across subjects. In response, a set of innovative pedagogical actions was implemented, including the use of a shared workload monitoring template among teaching staff and specific training workshops focused on emotional regulation strategies and collaborative learning. These measures contributed to increasing students’ awareness of self-management skills and improving their perception of institutional support. In fact, around 88% of participants positively evaluated the usefulness of the support actions, identifying them as relevant for coping with academic stress and enhancing motivation.

An additional innovative contribution of the project was the integration of a real contextual challenge derived from an extreme climatic event affecting the academic environment. This situation fostered experiential learning processes and strengthened transversal competences such as leadership, communication skills, social commitment and decision-making in uncertain scenarios.

The findings confirm that coordinated institutional strategies addressing emotional well-being can significantly contribute to improving engagement, learning experience and competence acquisition in STEM higher education. The proposed model offers transferable guidelines for the design of emotionally sustainable teaching practices and supports the integration of well-being indicators into educational innovation policies.

Keywords:

Emotional sustainability, academic engagement, burnout prevention, STEM education innovation.