Student Health and Wellbeing Community of Practice Workshop Series: Term 3

We aim to foster an inclusive community that is supportive, caring and respectful for all at UCL, and we would love you to join us if you have involvement with or interest in student health and wellbeing. Find out more and join our Teams Space here.

Join us this term as a wide range of staff take on topics investigating different aspects of health and wellbeing, equipping us with the knowledge and tools to support our students, our colleagues, and ourselves. Presentations run fortnightly, on alternating Wednesdays and Thursdays, at 12:30-1:15pm, in the form of a 30-minute workshop followed by a 15-minute Q&A.

Read more below to find out about this term’s workshops and to book your place.

28 April – PsychUP for Wellbeing student mental health programme

Presentation from the PsychUP for Wellbeing team giving a brief overview of its work supporting student mental health followed by a focus on the peer support element of the programme.

Psychology Informing University Practices for Wellbeing (PsychUP for Wellbeing) is a student mental health programme based in UCL’s Division of Psychology and Language Sciences. For the past year, PsychUP for Wellbeing has been running a peer support service in collaboration with the Students’ Union, which has been formally evaluated by a PhD student. We will present some of the emerging findings for the evaluation and what we have learnt from this pilot. PsychUP for Wellbeing has received funding to develop a student-led model of peer support, with a focus on intersectional approaches to support. We will provide an overview of this project and ways in which we would like to engage the wider UCL community in this work.

Sign up here.

11 May – Carmen Boeckeler – Wellbeing in the HE sector

Join us for Mental Health Awareness Week! This interactive session will focus on workplace wellbeing in the higher education sector. We will touch on the definitions of mental health and wellbeing and facts and figures around staff and student wellbeing that indicate a significant increase in mental ill-health, stress and loneliness in recent years. The focus on the PERMA Model and Positive Psychology will provide some practical tools and inspiration for reflection that we can use to fill our own cup and support colleagues and students to feel happier, healthier and more engaged. There will be an opportunity to give praise to other colleagues and share personal experiences and ideas on the topic - you can engage in the session as much or as little as you like.

Sign up here.

25 May: Improving access to treatment and support for students (IMPACTS project)

Presentation from the PsychUP for Wellbeing team summarising findings from the IMPACTS project and what students have told us about how they want to be supported at university. Psychology Informing University Practices for Wellbeing (PsychUP for Wellbeing) is a student mental health programme based in UCL’s Division of Psychology and Language Sciences. IMPACTS is a peer-research study, which means students lead the research. Student participants are invited to complete an online survey of their experiences at university. Sub-samples of students are then invited to a follow up interview with a peer researcher to discuss these experiences in more detail (based on the focus of the peer researcher's project). Seventeen peer researchers have completed projects so far. Over 130 student participants have been interviewed about their experiences.

The projects have been focussed in three broad areas:

• Particular demographic groups (e.g. Chinese students; South Asian students)
• Experiences of students who have had difficult experiences (e.g. students with a suicidal friend) or specific experiences (e.g. being a student carer) at university
• Experiences of students with particular mental health problems (e.g. eating disorders; self-harm) or physical health problems (e.g. Chronic Fatigue Syndrome/ME)

Sign up here.

8 June: Dr Lisa Fridkin & Dr Katie Quy – Impacts of online learning on coping, anxiety and motivation in UG students during the pandemic

The rapid and unprecedented shift from face-to-face instruction to remote online learning as a consequence of the Covid-19 pandemic has had a substantial impact on teaching and learning in Higher Education: Students had to adapt to a new way of learning, away from the campus settings and their peers, and to new forms of assessments. Our study tracked undergraduate students over the course of the academic year 2020-21 and identifies that the overall learning experience is contingent on factors such as year of study and whether students were first in family university students.  In this workshop we will discuss students’ experience of remote online learning during the Covid-19, looking specifically at patterns in academic stress, learning strategies, motivation, and coping. We will also talk about how students viewed the experience and offer some suggestions on how institutions might support students in the future in light of our findings.

Sign up here.