Towards a Well-being Framework for University (Part 3)

Last week, at the faculty meeting for the School of Information Technology, Carleton University, my colleagues unanimously approved my two-part proposal:

  1. That we formally adopt a set of recommendations on academic practices to provide a more emotionally supportive environment for students.
  2. That we allocate one day per term as "improvement day," when we set up workshops discussing how faculty can improve their teaching practices and open-houses for students to discuss their concerns and suggestions.
The set of recommended practices are the result of a two-year project by myself and a few other colleagues, which I mentioned the previous parts of this blog post:


These practices and some background information and resources can be found online and include general and special themes grouped together in categories such as Holistic Support, Connections, Learning and Motivation, and Continuous Improvement. 

 Each theme includes practices grouped into three levels:

  • Low Level of Effort Required, 
  • Medium Effort Required, 
  • Significant Effort or Institutional Support Required.

With more than 200 practices and organized in easy to difficult levels, there are recommendations for every instructor at any level of commitment and ability. Not being able to do anything or not having resources and knowledge are among the most common reasons that instructors may resist a more emotionally supportive practice.

 The set is still a work-in-progress and some special themes such as Accessibility and Inclusion are not developed yet. But, it is a significant step towards a well-being framework motivated by:

  • Increasing concerns over student mental health
  • Strong body of research suggesting the integration of well-being services into academic practices
  • Need of the faculty to explore what they can do to provide emotional support

 I am very proud of this achievement, grateful to my colleagues who helped develop this set and supported it, and hopeful that it can be adopted by others and expanded to a comprehensive well-being framework for students, faculty, and staff.

Popular posts from this blog

Is AI taking over our jobs (and classrooms)?

 “AI is here, and it’s coming for your job.” “AI is replacing artists.” “ChatGPT: The end of programming as we know it” “The college essay is dead.” Sensational headlines such as these are all over the news and the Internet these days. Since the public release of the AI-based text-to-image tool, DALL-E-2 , by OpenAI back in November 2022, followed by the release of OpenAI’s conversational agent, ChatGPT , in December, there has been a growing discussion about how Artificial Intelligence (AI) is changing the creative, professional, and educational world. While DALL-E and other text-to-image tools started to show up in 2021 and 2022, and AI conversational agents have been around for a while, It was OpenAI and its two products, DALL-E 2 and ChatGPT, that turned the trend of generative AI into a mainstream topic. ChatGPT reached 100 million users in less than two months, which was a record for any new app or social media. One can argue that this user base includes many who were curious
Read more

What truth can AI tell?

ChatGPT and other conversational agents (chatbots) based on artificial intelligence (AI) have experienced rapid growth recently. Their application and impact are being widely discussed, and so are the importance and ways to regulate them . When Geoffrey Hinton left Google with concerns about spam, government abuse, and super-intelligent machines, more attention was drawn to possible risks. Chatbots' shortcomings in giving an answer that can be considered “the truth” have been questioned to the point that Elon Musk is proposing an alternative to the existing products, referred to as TruthGPT. Such efforts aim at an AI that s not trained by incorrect, biased, or limited data and so can give the true answers. In a short article , Mark Bailey (National Intelligence University, USA) and Susan Schneider (Florida Atlantic University, USA) argue that chatbots shouldn’t decide what’s true. Their argument is based on the black-box nature of artificial neural networks that prevent transpar
Read more

Remote Work: A (Possibly) Hurtful Convenience

These days going to the university campus has a feeling that we have not experienced in more than two years: there are people, movement, and activities everywhere. While K-12 schools tried to remain open for in-person learning during the pandemic (as much as they could), universities were among many other workplaces that were almost fully virtual. Going back to in-person work and study certainly feels strange and brings many positive and negative feelings (getting stuck in traffic is only one of them).  With the COVID restrictions being gradually removed, many workers are leaving the home offices they established throughout the pandemic and returning to their traditional work environments. Many are negotiating the continuation of remote work or some mixed arrangement, while others are happy to be back to in-person work (and study). The debate involves workers and employers (and in universities, the students) and includes topics such as productivity and collaboration on one side and fle
Read more