Introduction
Well-being in Learning Spaces is a cross-campus collaboration to promote conditions for student well-being in classrooms and other learning environments. We are supporting faculty and other instructors in implementing small changes to educational practices (pedagogy, advising, mentoring, etc.) that can have a profound impact on students’ well-being and mental health.
Ideally, implementing these proactive practices will enhance student learning and contribute to positive changes in related outcomes, as well (e.g., engagement, attendance, student help-seeking, etc.), as well as ease some of the workload and burden on you as an instructor.
Who We Are
The Well-Being in Learning Spaces toolkit has been a collaborative effort. Primary authorship of the toolkit is shared by two individuals, Anne Laurita, Ph.D. and Sonya Satinsky, PhD. At the initial time of writing, both of us were working as scholar-practitioners within Health Promotion and Prevention Services, part of University Health Services. Well-being in Learning Spaces is a project of TigerWell, Princeton University's Health and Well-Being Initiative. Learn more in “About the Authors”.
Well-Being in Learning Spaces at Princeton would not be possible without the leadership and collaboration of: Vice President for Campus Life W. Rochelle Calhoun, Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering Maria Garlock, Ph.D., the project’s faculty lead, and Kathy Wagner, MPH, RCHES, Associate Director of HPPS.
Our collaborators include: USLC Faculty Committee (2019 and 2021); The McGraw Center for Teaching and Learning – Kate Stanton, Ph.D., Shirley Wang, Ph.D., Laura Murray Ed.D., Kelly Godfrey, Ph.D., & Nic Voge and the Summer 2020 student cohort, the Sexual Harassment/Assault Advising, Resources, and Education (SHARE) Office; Office of Gender Equity and Title IX Administration; Professor Nicole Shelton and Professor Stacey Sinclair; Sami Kahn, J.D., Ph.D. (Executive Director, Council on Science and Technology); and Calvin Chin, Ph.D. and John Kolligian, Ph.D.
We also owe an intellectual debt to similar projects begun at other universities, particularly Simon Fraser University and the University of Texas at Austin.
Our Approach
As public health educators in higher education, we look not only at individuals and their progress or lagging; we look at classrooms, advising cohorts, research labs, etc. as the units of measure for well-being outcomes.
How is this collection of people faring, at the group level? We are guessing that you can identify the classes and cohorts that feel great, work well together, and are suffused with goodwill and deep inquiry.
How might we harness those group-level strategies to lift the tide of well-being for all who are taking part?
We are aware of both the discussion and the data emphasizing that people all around the globe are experiencing poorer mental health, both acutely and chronically. This applies as much to instructors as it does to students, graduate and undergraduate. The goal of these strategies is not addressing acute crises; rather, we take a prevention-based approach. We hope that the creation of well-being-forward learning spaces may stave off the progression of acute crisis, by offering some guideposts for various learning environments.
We do not expect you to be trained mental health providers. We cannot state this enough. This set of tools is meant not to position you, the instructor, as the sole helpmeet of individual students; but rather, that you are the conductor and co-creator of your learning environments with your students and advisees, and that these strategies, small as they may be, can help you move toward those goals.
We cannot promise that crises will not happen if you use these strategies; that is the trouble with prevention-based work: it is not easy to measure what does not happen. We also are not promising that by using these strategies all your students will improve their performance in your class or always meet your deadlines. What we hope that other valuable outcomes might be that:
you become more approachable;
you receive better communication when students are struggling (that they do not just disappear); and
you know where to send them when they need more than you can provide.
Who We Think You Are
Again, as faculty members, preceptors, lecturers, instructors, unless you are also a trained mental health provider, you are not expected to be mental health providers, nor do you need to be. Not every inquiry or response merits crisis response. What we have heard that you want is to be accessible, transparent, and compassionate, with appropriate boundaries. We have heard that you want to create communities of goodwill, where difficult conversations can happen, constructive critique can be shared and heard, and that there is a feeling of some modicum of psychological safety on all sides. That your class, lab, precept, as a unit is an overall positive experience, moving you and your students through the processes they need to grow and graduate, and the iterations of research, teaching, and service that serve you and the University.
We have great compassion for the difficulties instructors at all levels have faced over the last several years. We offer the following content not only as potentially helpful for your students, but to also give you the best evidence as to what might make experiences more fulfilling for you.
We also recognize that we don’t all enter learning spaces being granted the same amount of authority and respect because of our identities, and we have attempted to take that into account within the strategies that follow.
Why Well-being in Learning Spaces?
Health and well-being are widely considered to be foundational to students’ academic success (El Ansari & Stock, 2010). Further, correlational research has shown that students with mental-health concerns are more likely to have a lower grade-point average and a higher probability of dropping out (Eisenberg, Golberstein, & Hunt, 2009).
Environmental strategies, practices, and policies can create unnecessary stress for students (Okanagan Charter, 2015, for more information). Faculty and other instructors, therefore, play a crucial role in shaping the spaces in which learning occurs to well-being promoting environments. College graduates are 1.4 times more likely to report that they are thriving in five key elements of well-being (career, social, financial, physical, and community well-being) if a professor cared about them as a person (Gallup, 2018).
Operational Definitions
Well-being
Encompasses the absence of impairment, the presence of thriving (including social connectedness, belonging, engagement, and happiness), and supportive environments. Student well-being is multi-dimensional and varies by context.
Learning Spaces
All of the spaces in which student learning occurs, including but not limited to: classrooms, labs, graduate student advisee meetings, co-curricular activities, and online communications.
Conditions for Well-Being
Conditions for well-being span 1) contexts created by instructional practices, such as a classroom, Lab, or cohort, 2) individual-level mindsets and skills that can be fostered, and 3) characteristics of the physical space where learning can occur. These conditions, supported by research across the fields of education, public health, and positive psychology/flourishing encompass concepts including, but not limited to, desirable difficulty, social connectedness, inclusivity, growth mindset, and purpose in life.
How you can use this toolkit
In the pages that follow, you will see concepts related to promoting well-being in learning contexts and communities followed by corresponding suggested practices.
This toolkit can be used as a menu, from which you can pick and choose which tools, practices, or strategies to implement in your learning spaces, accounting for your individual teaching style and goals. We are aware that many faculty members might already be utilizing a selection –even many – of these practices.
These practices do not infringe on the ability to teach content and uphold intellectual rigor; rather the suggested practices are more about creating a culture around well-being by making small tweaks to learning spaces. Because obstacles to well-being often negatively impact engagement and learning and because overall well-being contributes to engagement and learning, we would expect that incorporating the suggested practices will support these other valued aims.
This project is not done
This toolkit is iterative. It is not comprehensive. There is more to be built up, and more research is published regularly. Our team is also conducting several pilot phases, including a cohort of instructors implementing these strategies, to see what does and does not work well in our Princeton context.
We do not expect to ever land on a final, finished, there’s-no-more-to-add-or-learn product. We hope and expect that those using this toolkit will have feedback, anecdotes, or additional perspectives to add to what has been presented. We hope this is the case, and that you reach out to us at tigerwell@princeton.edu at any time to discuss further.