Life Happens: Empathy-based Practices in Courses
As I write this article, we are still grappling with the effects of the global pandemic, trying our best to create any sense of normalcy and trying to hang on to what may have worked for us before. But not everything that was considered the “norm” prior to the pandemic has to return to our current reality. It is incredibly important for us to recognize that life does indeed happen, which simply means that we may encounter situations in life that are beyond our control. Such experiences may leave us feeling helpless or anxious with emotions that we may not yet know how to process in a healthy way. With this in mind, it is our responsibility as teachers to explore empathy-based practices, both to support our students and ourselves.
So, what does it mean to acknowledge that life happens?
Life happens: Beginning with a foundation of empathy
We must strive to adjust our mindset to operate from a baseline of empathy. According to lessons shared by Dr. Brené Brown (2013), “empathy fuels connection,” and is a skill that can be learned that includes the following steps:
perspective taking, i.e., recognizing the perspective of their truth,
practicing non-judgment and listening intently,
recognizing emotion in the other person and connecting the other person’s experience with something that you may have felt before; and,
communicating the healing message that they are not alone.
Empathy is all about “feeling with people,” as Dr. Brown says.
When we operate with a foundation of empathy, it allows us to recognize that life happens all around – to us, to everyone around us. Such intentionality also requires us to practice self-empathy too, the same way we may offer empathy to others.
We each experience life based on our current level of self-awareness, our past experiences, and any unhealed and/or unacknowledged traumas from our past. [1]
Trauma often feels like a heavy word, doesn’t it? According to CAMH (the Canadian Centre for Addiction and Mental Health), trauma describes the “challenging emotional consequences that living through a distressing event can have for an individual.” What is distressing to someone can be very subjective too, considering the complexities of identity, families, society, and humanity.
So, operating with empathy involves fully acknowledging that we will never really know – nor will we fully understand – the stories and experiences of anyone who is in our working, teaching, and learning contexts. Therefore, we need to reframe our work and practices with this mindset.
Life happens: So, what can we do in our courses?
There are several ways to implement empathy-based and trauma-informed practices in our courses. Our goal when recognizing life happens is to be open to supporting our students the way they need to be supported. Often having an open channel for discussion and dialogue and creating a sense of psychological safety in the classroom is the place to start because it allows students to reach out to us if they have any questions or concerns or need some support.
Ultimately, such accommodations are about recognizing that despite the best intentions, sometimes, life happens and may bring with it unavoidable circumstances and experiences. This requires us to be people first, look at our students as humans who can go through a variety of life-changing experiences when they study, and be compassionate.
There are many ways we can facilitate this safety in the class, and here are a few examples that I have used in the courses that I teach (click on each example below to expand details):
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What is it?
• This is a clause that I include in the syllabi of any course that I teach or co-teach.
How does it work?
• Currently, this is a way to allow a 24-hour submission window for most assignments in my courses, i.e., I accept all submissions made within 24 hours of an assignment deadline.
• This does not apply for exams or quizzes, but it applies to any written or coding assignments.
• Students do not apply for this extension, everyone in the class has this enabled by default.
Can students ask for more days?
• Life does indeed happen, and there is no real way to account for how many days of support a student may need. If students need more than 24 hours, I suggest that they consider applying for a student declaration of absence (see below), which allows for more accommodations.
Frequently asked questions (FAQ):
1. How does this interact with students who have accommodations through the office of student support and accessibility?
• This option is available to everyone; however, it does not replace formal accommodations. If a student wishes to invoke their official accommodations, their accommodations take priority over any other supports that are offered in the course. I usually have a conversation (via email) with the student confirming the supports they need in such cases.
2. What happens if students treat the ending of the 24-hour life happens submission window as the deadline?
• It is possible, and I trust students to be able to make these decisions as it works best for them. It is about their learning, and they are better to set such priorities as they manage their schedules. As a facilitator of their learning, I can strive to provide such options and hope that they are able to make good choices to support themselves.
3. How much extra work is it to set up and manage? Especially for large classes?
• I have used this clause in classes of around 45 students and in classes with 250-300 students. It works well and it is not a challenging clause to manage. It requires setting up a different “end date/time” for the assignment than the “due date/time”, and most learning management systems (we use Brightspace) allow us to set it up reasonably easily.
• One thing I have observed is that frantic and panicked emails with students missing the deadline by 5 minutes or less than an hour or so have reduced significantly. Students know that they have an additional 24 hours to submit beyond the deadline, so I feel that it is straightforward to manage.
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Course Assignment Submission Policy (CSCI 1170) 1. Students are expected to submit all work on Brightspace or otherwise as instructed. 2. The Life Happens clause for individual assignments (Ax):
3. Student Declaration of Absence (SDA):
4. Note: If a student wishes to submit an SDA, the “Life Happens clause” above will not count towards the submission period extended due to the SDA, i.e., students cannot “stack” such accommodations. |
Fig. 1. Example course assignment submission policy from the Winter 2022 offering of one of my courses, CSCI 1170 (Intro to Web Design and Development).
(Click on each example below to expand details.)
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What is it?
• Student declaration of absence, or SDA, is a university-sanctioned form that enables students to request support (e.g., extensions) for some types of academic work in a course (other than final exams or major project work).
• It was introduced as a replacement for the medical leave certificate, i.e., doctor’s note.
How does it work?
• It requires students to submit a signed PDF via an assignment submission dropbox on our learning management system, indicating the assignment for which they need an accommodation.
• This submission is expected to be made before the deadline and the student is expected to consult with the course instructor about the accommodations they need.
• For an SDA submission, course instructors can offer supports such as a deadline extension for up to 3 days (which is usually preferred by students) or other options such as not considering an assignment towards the final grade, etc.
• This requires a conversation with the student to ensure they get the correct support.
Frequently asked questions (FAQ):
1. Can students ask for more than 3 days of extension?
• Typically, I set a hard deadline of 3 days, because I announce solutions for the assignment after 3 days. If students require more than 3 days, I consider their situation and, after a conversation with them, collaboratively develop appropriate supports for them.
2. What happens if students want to combine SDA with other accommodations?
• In my courses, students are not able to stack SDA with other accommodations such as the Life Happens clause or other supports offered to everyone in the course.
• In case students need more time, as I said above, I have a conversation with them to see how best to support them at that time.
• In case students want to use SDA with their official accommodations, I have a conversation with their accommodations advisor to see how best to support them.
3. How much extra work is it to set up and manage? Especially for large classes?
• Much of the work comes down to setting expectations at the beginning of the term, which would require highlighting supports and expectations in the syllabus and on the course LMS. Including a way to contact you for any questions would help students as well, particularly if this is the first time that they may have encountered such different supports in a course.
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What is it?
• This is a mechanism through which we can recognize that learning happens progressively and iteratively as students progress through the course, and allow students to “make up” their grades as they work on different aspects of the course.
Why is this important?
• The reason why I use this grade accommodation is because if a student has performed better on a future assignment than a previous one, it could indicate that (a) the student may have been ill, or (b) there may have been something else in their life interfering and impacting their performance in the first two assignments, or (c) they may have needed a few more iterations to learn the concepts, or (d) something else.
• As you can see in the example implementation, this mechanism simply looks at the fact that people continue to learn, use feedback on previous assignments in this learning, and emphasizes that trust in their ability to learn by means of grades.
How does it work?
• In the current way of implementation, I set up my assignments so that they are incremental and there are overlapping learning outcomes (and smaller course objectives) being assessed in each assignment.
• When I compute the final grade, I use a formula to check if the student has performed better in the subsequent assignment as compared to the previous. If they have, then, I take 5% of the grade from the subsequent assignment and apply it to the previous before the final grade is computed.
• This works for pairs of assignments only, e.g., assignment 2 and assignment 1, assignment 3 and assignment 2, and so on (see example below).
Frequently asked questions (FAQ):
1. Are there any restrictions? Who does this apply to?
• I apply this grade accommodation to everyone in my classes. It only applies to their assignments because they are the aspect of the course that allows students to demonstrate their incremental learning.
2. What types of courses does this apply to?
• I teach computer science and programming courses, mostly, and have used this scheme in such courses.
• However, if you are teaching a non-computer science or non-programming course, you can still use such a scheme that allows for students to demonstrate their prior learning and use those lessons (and assignment feedback) when working on future assignments.
Example implementation:
• Suppose there are four assignments in the course (A1, A2, A3 and A4) and a student scores 55%, 75%, 100%, 100%, respectively, in each of the assignments.
• Using my formula and this grade accommodation, the grades for A1 would be updated because the student’s performance in the next assignment (A2) was better than that of A1, and the grade would change to 58.75% instead of 55%, i.e., with 5% from the grade for A2 added to the grade of A1. Similarly, the grade for A2 would update to 80% with 5% of the grade for A3 applied to the grade of A2.
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What is it?
• I acknowledge that I cannot fully understand or know a student’s personal experience that may be interacting with how they are participating in the course at a given moment in their life. Therefore, I try to design my courses so that they are responsive to student needs.
How does it work?
• Keeping an open communication channel and answering questions or have a dialogue with students to explore the supports they may need.
• Sometimes, this may mean that we have an email or face-to-face or virtual meetings with the student and offer support the best we can.
Frequently asked questions (FAQ):
1. Is there anything to keep in mind, especially if we have to explore options with the student?
• This is best when we work with student affairs/student support individuals in our departments or university. For example, we have an Assistant Dean (Students) and a student support group who work with the student to identify the supports they may need. They may also connect the student with accommodations officers or members of the Student Health group, as needed. In such cases, our roles may be to offer a first point of communication/contact, and facilitate the connection between the student and the student support group member, and they can recommend accommodations to us.
2. Are there any concerns with such flexible options?
• Compassion fatigue is real. My recommendation is that you develop a support network for yourself and remember to practice self-care intentionally.
• Workload may increase. You can assign a lead TA in your course to support you with such accommodations and this would be a good way to collaborate with students to identify the kinds of supports they may need.
• If you want to become a first point of contact, I highly recommend taking a course on psychological first-aid (like the free course on Coursera that is offered by Johns Hopkins University), which teaches skills like active and reflective listening that are critical for being a first point of contact. There may be other courses similar to this (e.g., Mental Health First Aid offered by the Mental Health Commission of Canada, or ones offered by the university), which you may also consider.
Life happens: But how are these practices fair for everyone in the class?
It’s all about equity. Not everyone needs the same support when learning a topic, so supporting students as they need to be supported must be our goal. And this is the definition of equity. Figure 2 highlights the difference between equality and equity. An equal platform for everyone to succeed is a great starting point and it allows us to define fair policies. To accommodate student needs, we have to go beyond these starting points to develop the most appropriate supports. This is why accommodation policies exist – both for students, and staff and faculty – to support each in their roles.
Fig 2. Equity v. equality
(Source: Equity vs. Equality: What’s the Difference? | Mental Floss)
When recognizing that life happens and considering supports for students, it is ultimately about setting and managing expectations. If we are clear in our intention and state our expectation and drive to support students, we can collaborate with them to support them as they need to be supported. It also allows us to think of what needs to be changed in our collective practices and advocate for such changes. If you think about it, acknowledging that life happens and offering support form an example of equity in action.
Life happens to me too: What can I do to support myself?
In addition to all the other tasks required by our roles, perhaps considering new supports feels like one more thing. I know, and I empathize. You and your well-being are important too, just like our students and their well-being.
The suggestions in this article and in many other articles you may find on this topic are merely a starting point – they are never intended as a final end point. When thinking about what to change, consider the first step (which may be reading an article), and follow it up with the first small thing you can modify in your practice and then the next small thing, and so on. Never feel pressured to do everything all at once. As in all things in life, change is to be implemented in small, incremental steps, just like enjoying a delicious cheesecake in small bites.
As you work towards such change, please remember to intentionally practice self-care. This means developing a support network for yourself (including friends, family, physical and mental healthcare professionals, etc.), identifying and setting your boundaries, enforcing your personal boundaries, and learning about (and availing) academic supports available to you. You may have access to educational developers either within your department or through the Centre for Learning and Teaching, who have the skills to brainstorm and suggest things you can change in your courses to implement accommodations. Reaching out for help is often tough – please don’t let that stop you from approaching your work and any changes you may need to implement in your courses in a healthy manner. Reach out to people, take care of yourself, so that you can show up for your students in a healthy and inclusive manner. Remember that you are also modeling healthy behaviours to your students and people with whom you work. Taking care of ourselves, especially when we need help, is probably one of the most authentic ways we can live.
Many times, we let fear of the unknown or unlearned prevent us from considering flexibility and options, both to support our students. Our role is to facilitate learning and enable learners to demonstrate their learning, and there are many flexible ways to do so.
You’ve got this. I believe in you.
I have shared some ideas here in this article that I have learned through interactions with students and colleagues and lessons drawn from books and videos by many inspiring individuals. Please feel free to continue this conversation on social media and I am eager to learn your ideas on equity and student accommodations from you (I’m @RaghavSampangi on Twitter and Instagram).
Footnotes
[1] I say current level when referring to self-awareness, because I believe that self-awareness, like empathy and many others, is an intentional practice; one which requires us to work on it every day of our lives.
References
Brown, B. (2013) RSA Short - Empathy, brenebrown.com
Canadian Centre for Addiciton and Mental Health [CAMH], “Trauma,” https://www.camh.ca/en/health-info/mental-illness-and-addiction-index/trauma
Dr. Raghav sampangi
Senior Instructor, Faculty of Computer Science