Student wellbeing in the learning zone

We are fairly clear how digital technology can have negative impacts on wellbeing. For a start, endless connectivity changes sleep patterns and disrupts concentration and rest. Then there is personal intrusion, high and increasing expectations about personal social profiles, the instant impact of online trolls, as well as the depressing apparent perfection of other people’s lives seen through image and video. These are some of the costs of today’s technology affordances, difficult to avoid and perhaps inevitable as the price of staying connected.

Just as clearly, there are considerable advantages in using such technologies, which is why they pervade education and training and, particularly during times of pandemic, when physical contact is no longer so easy, they are dominating the learning zone through web conferencing, virtual learning environments, instant messaging and information availability 24/7. In the educational domain, professionals have become accustomed over recent years to global accessibility and contacts, but for students, their learning experience (as distinct from their social experience) through web and social media may not have been so great until their physical lives were suddenly constrained by health anxieties around the novel coronavirus.

If we take a look at the relationship between digital technology and wellbeing, in particular for students at school, college or university, we confront both costs and benefits; it is important that both are considered by educational institutions. But first, what do we mean by student wellbeing? The PACES model, offered by authors Nelson et al. (2015) included physical, affective, cognitive, economic and social dimensions and this allows us to look at student support services such as student counselling, summarising the kind of help students regularly need. In the learning zone, the affective, cognitive and social elements come to the fore, if we accept Spratt’s view that students’ wellbeing greatly influences their abilities to learn (Spratt, 2016). Student support must also cater for the economic survival of learners and their physical accommodation, health, safety and safeguarding, but teachers focus on students’ cognitive development and how this may be impacted by affective and social experiences.

As students begin a study year under current constraints, they may be surprised at the prevalence of email as the major communication conduit which places of further and higher education use to talk to students and give essential information. Email may not have been part of their personal networks before, and it takes a while to adapt if they have only been used to instant messaging or video chat. This exacerbates demands for information and feelings of panic and uncertainty, as students may not find the instant response they are expecting. Other new technologies will surround and perhaps swamp new students (and staff) as all must get used to the way institutions operate online; the result can be more panic and a greater sense of isolation, especially if students have just moved away from home or to a different country culture.

Although many new students are likely to be offered a blended learning experience including some face to face teaching, the main access to information, knowledge, academic practice and assessment will be online. The costs of purely online interaction for learning are great, since this requires a level of independent motivation and determination which does not apply to all learners. So we are faced with the problem of how to support student wellbeing through largely digital means, trying to ensure that face to face access is always possible, even if it is not the current norm.

Here the affordances of interactive technologies include the potential for information on demand, for regular and consistent communication, for personalisation of response and of course for dialogue without the need to be present in a particular place or time. All this takes planning and expertise, which falls on the shoulders of academic and professional staff. While there is much to learn, these benefits are enabled by digital technologies and must be grasped where the traditional classroom is not an option. We are not talking here about content knowledge in education, which can be provided in many forms, ideally in phased developmental ways, but about the use of technologies to support learner wellbeing, and in turn to facilitate learning. It is vital to the mental health of learners that ways are found to use technologies to reduce uncertainty and mediate stress, keeping people connected to sources of advice from teachers, their educational institutions and particularly to their peers.

Algorithms, touchpoints, mood icons are all ways in which interactive learning environments can offer connection, and, given particular patterns of interaction, can put students in touch with support. But the technology alone can’t provide a sufficient answer. Even though physical interaction may not be possible, synchronous or live interaction online can contribute to wellbeing in ways that pre-recorded content, simulations, weblinks and quizzes simply do not. This requires rapid learning on the part of teachers, especially those whose classroom skills may be great but who are unfamiliar with technologies which facilitate synchronous conferencing and learning interactions.

This is not just about moving from didactic teacher to facilitator of learning, it is not about simply curating a range of learning opportunities for students; it is about managing the technology sufficiently well to provide live connections to students as well as asynchronous sources, maintaining strong positive encouragement online, setting up ways for students to interact with each other online and enabling easy access to further support when needed. Teachers and their professional partners must recognise the diversity of device use and wifi variance among students, understanding how to ensure accessibility and how to encourage what Helen Beetham called ‘digital wellbeing’ (2016). Ultimately the physical and the mental components of wellbeing are fully connected, so thinking about the study/life balance of our students, relating to them directly as rounded human beings rather than one-dimensional learners must come first in our duty of care.