Ways to Support Students Experiencing Stress and Anxiety in the Online Environment
Moving to an online learning environment isn’t what most students signed up for when they registered for classes earlier this year. For many students, this move, along with the global pandemic and other world events, has resulted in heightened anxiety. While instructors are not counsellors, there are some practices we can adopt to support students during this time.
Provide Structure
For many students, moving to the online environment means a loss of routine. Students must adopt a revised schedule in an uncertain time. Building your course with clear structure can help students create a new routine. You can send out weekly check-in emails with reminders of what’s due that week. You may want to include a checklist for students to follow as they move through the course so they can monitor their progress, as well as see everything that’s expected of them. This also helps students with their self-directed learning. You could also break down a larger project into smaller pieces such as dividing a paper into an outline, a draft, and then a final version. While requiring more assignments may seem stressful, it prevents procrastinating the completion of a large final assignment which causes more stress in the end. It can be especially useful to have consistent due dates for various assignments so that students are always aware of when they’re expected to submit. Choose a time like Friday evenings and make all assignments due at the same time, when possible.
Build Community
In addition to a loss of routine, many students are missing their social connections. When possible, provide students with a sense of community in their online learning. You can offer virtual office hours for students to drop-in with questions or concerns. This helps the students feel supported and recognize that you’re available for them. Students may also find it useful to have different discussion boards including one for course questions or one for interesting media and articles related to the course. This can help students engage with one another socially. You may also want to consider an introduction discussion board where students can post about themselves and then read about their classmates. This may help students to feel less alone during this time of remote learning.
Communicate Clearly
Along with clear course structure, it’s important to be clear with your communication and your expectations. Provide students all the necessary information regarding course requirements, assignment weights and deadlines, and course protocols. Be clear about what assignments are highest priority and which are not. By providing students with this information, they can decide where to focus their energy. It may also be useful to communicate the reasons behind specific assignments or activities. When students understand the goal of an assignment, it provides meaning and value beyond the grades.
Organize Brightspace
There are some things that you can do on your Brightspace page that can reduce student stress. In addition to using checklists and providing weekly reminders, you should ensure that your site is easy to navigate with clear and consistent labels for modules and assignments. You should minimize the number of clicks a student has to make to locate important information. For example, your syllabus should be easy to find. Try to use simple and clear language in your announcements, assignment descriptions, and feedback to increase student comprehension. As always, you should ensure your site is accessible for all students by creating materials that are screen-reader friendly and videos that have captions or transcripts. Equity, diversity and inclusion are just as, if not more, important in remote learning.
Offer Opportunities for Choice
During this time when students are living through a pandemic, stressful world events, and unexpected online learning, many students are feeling a loss of control over their lives. It’s important to offer students opportunities for some control in the class. Depending on the enrollment size of your course, perhaps you can provide various options for assignments including a choice between a written submission or a video assignment. These small choices allow students to have some agency over their own learning.
Show Compassion
In the end, one of the most important practices to support your students through anxiety and online learning is to show compassion to your students. If you can, offer flexible deadlines or have policies in place for requesting extensions. Share your experience with online teaching, show the students that they aren’t alone in this unexpected transition. Encourage healthy behaviours such as mindfulness, reflective check-ins, and good habits. Provide students with a list of resources available through the university. Students will learn better in an environment where they feel supported.
These uncertain times are stressful for students but there are some strategies that instructors can employ to help students manage their stress and anxiety. While not all of these strategies will apply to your course or discipline, be mindful of what practices you can incorporate and how they will support your students. We are all in this together.
References:
Mays Imad, Leveraging the Neuroscience of Now Inside Higher Ed, June 2020.
Jessica Minahan, Maintaining Connections, Reducing Anxiety While School Is Closed An Educational Leadership Special Report, A New Reality: Getting Remote Learning Right (77): 22-27.
Sarah Brown and Alexander C. Kafka, Covid-19 Has Worsened the Student Mental-Health Crisis. Can Resilience Training Fix It? The Chronicle of Higher Education, May 2020.
Valerie Strauss, A trauma-informed approach to teaching through coronavirus — for students everywhere, online or not The Washinton Post, March 2020.
Tiffany Harper, 10 Ways to Help Anxious Students with eLearning Anadea Inc., April 2019.
Maria Lamp, How to Support Your Remote Teams Throughout the COVID-19 Crisis Jobbatical.