Embedding Mental Health Programming in the First-year Classroom

Recent research shows that first-year students are facing increasing mental health challenges. Early intervention has been identified as an important step towards improving mental health and well-being in the student population. Finding ways to integrate early interventions in the academic realm is critical for improving students’ mental health and well-being.How do we incorporate mental health programming into the first-year classroom? The gold standard of the academic delivery of student success programming is the high-impact First Year Seminar, which has been extensively researched and analyzed. Such programming is widespread in the United States but is not common practice in Canada, so alternative models are necessary. Challenges of curricular integration of such programming include cost-effectiveness, sustainability, student buy-in, instructor buy-in and loss of efficacy due to pedagogical restrictions. In this session, we will discuss two ways in which we have partnered to bring mental health support programming into the first-year classroom. In September 2021 and January 2022, we conducted two live visits to the course BC 1800: Student Success Seminars, a small, first-year course that focuses primarily on providing academic support and learning skills instruction to science students. We also partnered to produce a standalone H5P eClass learning module entitled “Managing Academic Stress”. This module was piloted in Fall 2021 with 1108 students in MATH 1013: Applied Calculus I, a large, multi-section introductory mathematics course for students in the Faculty of Science and Lassonde School of Engineering. We were motivated to offer strategies for students taking steps towards improved mental health and well-being, normalize the access of mental health supports, and to remove perceived barriers in accessing such supports. We will discuss our perceptions of our two interventions, relate our experiences developing and presenting these resources, and present data collected from each experience.

Presenters: Andrew Skelton & Jim Salmon

Click to view the recorded version of Embedding Mental Health Programming in the First-year Classroom!

Using Community (Citizen) Science to Engage Non-Science Students During a Pandemic: the Challenges and Rewards

The Covid-19 pandemic is, at the root, an environmental issue, and teaching or taking a course on Biodiversity and Conservation during this time presented some intense personal challenges for both myself and my non-science major students. Isolation, a sense of overwhelm and hopelessness, and other mental health challenges became quickly apparent. I intentionally chose Community (also known as Citizen) Science volunteering an alternate form of engagement and assessment as I was developing my remote course on Biodiversity and Conservation in order to counter these emotions through positive, concrete action. Students are guided to choose an in-person or virtual Community Science Project at the beginning of the 6-credit course using SciStarter, Zooniverse, and other resources, with the expectation that they will devote a minimum of 8 volunteer hours to the project over the course of the year. My TA's and I then use a Check-In assignment partway through to assess student progress and scaffold the background knowledge underlying their different projects. Students then compile a Report to fellow students at the end of the year that explains the purpose, activities, and outcomes of their Project through a creative format of their choice. The Reports are peer-graded and scores are finalized by myself and TA's. Student feedback consistently shows that the intended goal of positive, productive engagement is achieved. I will also share some of the learning experiences, challenges, and unexpected benefits that I discovered while employing Community Science in my classroom through this presentation.

Presenter: Robin Marushia

Click here to view the recorded version of Using Community (Citizen) Science to Engage Non-Science Students During a Pandemic: the Challenges and Rewards!

Easier Said than Done: The Behaviour Change Experiment

For my presentation, I would like to share an assignment from the fourth-year psychology seminar course that I teach (PSYC 4145: Addiction Etiology and Treatment). During the first week of class, I introduce students to one of the final assignments that they will be submitting: The Behaviour Change Experiment. I encourage students, early in the semester, to challenge themselves by select a behaviour that they would like to decrease over the next 12 weeks and to journal their experience. The assignment serves as an experiential learning exercise that allows students to gain an in-depth understanding of addiction and what individuals with addiction may experience throughout their journey to recovery. To illustrate, a student may wish to decrease the amount of time they spend on social media because they find it leads them to feel self-critical and it distracts them from their responsibilities. However, when the student attempts to change this behaviour by reducing their social media use to 30 minutes a day, they find themselves struggling to remain within this limit. This experience allows students to appreciate (in a small dose) a core feature of addiction which is continuing a behaviour (i.e., social media use) even though it’s causing or exacerbating physical or psychological discomfort (i.e., self-critical feelings).Throughout my presentation, I will discuss the assignment, how it aligns with course outcomes, and how it demonstrates to students that decreasing a pleasurable behaviour is often easier said than done. With permission, I will also share anonymous excerpts from previous student assignments to demonstrate some of the experience’s students have reported and how they clearly reflect (albeit on a smaller scale) what individuals with addiction experience.

Presenter: Vanessa Morris

Click here to view the recorded version of Easier Said than Done: The Behaviour Change Experiment!

Psychologically-Attuned Pedagogy for Students in Transition

Established in 2002, Fundamentals of Learning: Essentials for a Successful University Experience is an academic recovery course offered to students with negative academic decisions in the Faculty of LA&PS. Recent scholarship on best practices for promoting the academic success and retention of students “at risk” of academic dismissal suggests that students on probation represent a unique subset of “students in transition.” Yet these students' experiences of academic and personal setbacks and recovery – and the affective dimensions of this transition -- are rarely addressed within the scholarship on teaching and learning in higher ed.While Fundamentals of Learning has always attended to the multiple intersecting factors that contribute to students’ academic and personal challenges, the pandemic highlighted the urgency of placing mental health and well-being at the centre of the curriculum. In this session, I share how the teaching and advising team for Fundamentals of Learning adapted and refined a psychologically-attuned and contemplative approach to teaching and learning in response to online learning and the pandemic. This approach includes: psychologically-attuned decision letters and communications about the course; contemplative writing and reading exercises to cultivate mindfulness; the development of a non-judgemental classroom ethos through contemplative teaching practice; embedded writing workshops that address writing anxiety; and embedded mental health workshops led by a therapist from Student Counselling, Health and Well-Being.Student assessment of the course revealed that these teaching and advising strategies had enormous positive impact on student well-being and sense of belonging. These strategies increased student confidence in their academic capacities, while simultaneously enhancing their self-efficacy and ability to cope with future difficulties after Fundamentals of Learning. While these teaching and advising strategies were developed to help a select group of students transition through university, they hold broader lessons for how faculty might address the affective dimensions of academic challenges for all students.

Presenter: Karen Ruddy

Click here to view the recorded presentation of Psychologically-Attuned Pedagogy for Students in Transition!

Supporting First-year Students to Enhance Long-term Student Success and Retention

PANF 1900: Skills for Success in the Arts was created specifically to enhance the development of generic and critical literacy skills of undergraduate students enrolled in one of AMPD seven BA/BFA programs. Launched in January 2021, the course was designed based on a competency-mapping of first- and second-year core AMPD course and assignment learning objectives to support students through their degrees. To enhance engagement and relevance of student learning, the course involved the creation of 30 self-grading OERs using H5P, ten films of interviews with faculty members about discipline-specific skills, weekly interactive lesson plans and an e-book for students to refer to after completing the course. The teaching assistants (TAs), who led the tutorials, were trained by the instructor on the use of specific features of the online platform to encourage connection and collaborative learning among students. To investigate students’ experience of the course, with a focus on what they found most helpful and most disruptive to their learning, students were asked to complete questionnaires at several points during the course. Students were also interviewed post-course about their overall experience and how the content, focused on critical thinking, reading, writing, communication and research and presentation skills, supported their learning in other courses. Having conducted a thematic analysis of the interview data, the following three themes were extracted: (1) connection, corresponding to engagement and interaction with peers; (2) affirming interactions with teaching staff, indicating that students felt supported through their interactions with the TAs; and (3) personal external factors, referring to how different aspects of students’ situations (e.g., health, finances, accessibility to course material, etc) related to their performance in the course. Overall, these comprehensive results demonstrated the efficacy of the course design and delivery and correlated to the potential for on-going student success in subsequent years of their AMPD degrees.

Presenters: Bridget Cauthery & Alice Kim

Click here to view the recorded version of Supporting First-year Students to Enhance Long-term Student Success and Retention!