What is it?
Wellbeing is more than the absence of illness and more than just individual wellness. It can be deeply personal, can involve connection to community, self, and nature, and may be tied to the interrelation and balance of specific dimensions of health (physical, mental, emotional, spiritual etc.).
Student and instructor wellbeing are closely intertwined, with reciprocal links existing between both populations (Kiltz, et al., 2020). When instructors experience optimal wellbeing, they are more likely to have a positive impact on their students’ wellbeing and success (Kiltz, et al., 2020 Trolian, Archibald & Jach, 2020). Furthermore, when students are doing well, instructor wellbeing and the teaching experience are also likely to be enhanced (Kiltz, et al., 2020).
There are resources instructors can access and ways to support their own wellbeing so that they can flourish as academics. There are also practices they can use to support student wellbeing, given that students’ mental health and wellbeing can have a significant impact on academic performance, retention and their overall university experience (Guzzardo et al., 2021).
Considerations
Implementing wellbeing-supportive practices at all levels is essential to support mental health and wellbeing for both students and instructors. It is important to recognize that this includes personal self-care, creating a supportive classroom and workplace environment, and fostering a culture of wellbeing across the entire institution.
Caring for yourself: Caring for yourself is a prerequisite for caring for others. Identify how you will keep yourself well, knowing academic careers are demanding, and instructors undergo many stresses including high workload, work-life integration, competition, and uncertainty.
Caring for your students: Students often face numerous stressors, including financial and academic pressures as well as balancing competing demands such as work, relationships and life responsibilities (Logan & Burns, 2023). Academic stressors, such as workload and grading, academic expectations and perceived competence, are significant contributors to the psychological distress experienced by post-secondary students (Barbayannis et al., 2022). When student mental health needs are acknowledged by instructors, students feel supported, and when effective wellbeing practices are integrated into the learning environment, students are more likely to thrive (Baik, Larcombe & Brooker; 2019, Fernandez et al., 2016; Kiltz, et al., 2020).
Where to start
Take care of your own wellbeing
Seek opportunities to connect with your colleagues and peers as they can be invaluable to your wellbeing and your development as an instructor. Explore resources to foster your wellbeing as an individual, opportunities to champion healthy workplace initiatives, and services to support a healthy work environment.
Design syllabi with wellbeing in mind
Course syllabi and Canvas are key student touchpoints that have the potential to set the foundation for an inclusive learning environment and increase the awareness and familiarity of health and wellbeing resources on campus that are designed to support students during their learning journey. Some simple actions that you can implement today include:
- Adding a Students Health and Wellbeing section to your syllabus, Canvas course, and sharing the resources listed to your students in the first week of term.
- Applying strategies from the Learner-Centred Syllabus to create an inclusive, supportive syllabus.
Embed wellbeing strategies into teaching and learning environments
Enhancing student wellbeing can be most effective when strategies are embedded within learning environments. Find resources, toolkits and profiles of faculty members implementing innovative practices to support student wellbeing on the Wellbeing in Teaching and Learning Environments website. Use this informative guide and checklist (PDF) of teaching practices that support student wellbeing.
Go further
Your wellbeing
- Find opportunities to connect with peers, employee resource groups, a mentor, or communities of practice.
- Do a mental health self-check using the Mental Health Continuum.
- Access health services, programs and benefits including ergonomics, accessibility supports, learning opportunities, psychological supports.
Student wellbeing
UBC has a range of wellbeing services and resources to help you support and connect your students to the most appropriate care. You do not need to have all of the answers, and you are not responsible for fixing every issue that a student might be experiencing. Instead, see your role as a connector to resources and supports that can help.
- Teaching Practices that Support Wellbeing (PDF): An informative guide and checklist of teaching practices that support student wellbeing.
- UBC Wellbeing Strategic Initiative Fund: Supporting Wellbeing in Learning Environments: Provides up to $5,000 to support students, faculty, and staff to embed health and wellbeing strategic initiatives within classroom environments.
- Print out the list of key support services at UBC-Vancouver so that you can refer students to them:
- Supporting Students in Distress (PDF): Use this guide to know what to look for, say, and do to assist students in distress.
- Early Alert: Proactive support to help students navigate challenges before they become overwhelming. Instructors can submit alerts for students in need.
- Student Health and Wellbeing Services: Services including primary care, counseling, health promotion, and recovery support.
- Centre for Accessibility: Facilitates disability-related accommodations and programming initiatives designed to remove barriers for students with disabilities and ongoing medical conditions in all aspects of university life.
Faculty story
“At UBC Journalism, I try to work together with students to ensure that our classrooms are generative, collaborative, and creative spaces. We know that learning journalism can be difficult, so we try to find ways to make the experience creative and fun. I try to present both traditional and visual syllabi to use artistic expression to encourage curiosity.
Our students are learning to explore the world and to think about how knowledge is accumulated and shared. We send them out on scavenger hunts to work in teams to learn about each other and the university together. They learn to strategize, listen to each other, and tell stories. We try to build experiences in lesson plans.
When it rains, instead of sheltering indoors, we often leave the classroom and walk outside. I’ll ask students to take a silent stroll through the ancient trees or contemplate the stillness of the Nitobe Garden. If students are stressed, we will walk all the way down the cliff to wander along the beach. Students are sometimes reluctant, but once they are at the beach they begin running, gathering cedar boughs, taking selfies and leaning into the breeze. When they return to the classroom, they dry out and start to tell each other stories.
Sometimes, we share food by holding potlucks or offering a simple batch of cookies or muffins. We talk about stress and try to normalize the tension of learning and growing and adapting to change. Students begin to talk openly about mental health and how their own wellbeing strategies (sleep, good nutrition, friendships and connections) may help others as they work through the challenges of studying.
One of the simplest, most enduring initiatives involves collaboration. We try to ensure that students work with every one of their cohort members. They often talk about how instead of working with people they know or relate to […] they find it enriching and new to reach for those they do not know. They talk about opening their own hearts and minds and how much the experience expands their understanding and builds their sense of belonging.
These are simple things, but our students tell us – again and again – what a difference they make.”
