Tips and Strategies for Reducing Stress and Increasing Success
With each passing term, we are learning more about the factors that can help make remote courses successful learning experiences, as well as the very challenging situations that students and instructors are facing in the midst of this pandemic.
The Keep Learning team has curated existing tips and suggestions based on research, student feedback, and instructor experience, to help address student and instructor stress levels. While not all suggestions and strategies will be suitable for every instructor or course, they are a starting point to help alleviate your students’ and your own stress as you plan your term.
Research shows that the first day of a course matters, so it is important to set the tone early.
- Consider spending your first lecture or module of the term familiarizing students with your syllabus, including the course schedule. If possible, provide an overview of any technologies you will be using in your course, particularly those used for synchronous activities, and ensure that they are working as expected for your students.
- Explain your course design and delivery decisions early and reinforce this messaging during term, so students are aware that the course is being taught in a way to support their learning.
- Direct your students to the Student Success Office (SSO) resources for such things as time management and strategies for learning online. Download and share their Instructor Resources (login required) such as the 5-minute skills presentations.
- The library's Assignment Planner helps students plan out their work from the start of term.
Everyone is feeling isolated and disconnected in these times.
- Regularly connect with your students and encourage them to connect with each other. Strategies include introductory videos or other introductions (e.g., pet photo sharing), discussion forums, collaborative notetaking, short synchronous sessions, and group activities.
- Remind students that there are many people at Waterloo working alongside them for their success (and know that it is not only up to you to be there for them). For example, they can seek peer tutoring or sign up to tutor others through Tutor Connect in the Portal.
- Establish and communicate a response turnaround time for you and/or your TA. Consider using discussion boards or other collaborative spaces rather than email to collate and respond to questions.
- Initially in group discussions and chats, students may feel anxious. Consider allowing anonymous posting, as long as netiquette guidelines are followed.
- Gather mid-semester feedback (CTE) as early as week three, to learn what is helping and challenging students, and engage them in a dialogue about what can be changed and how.
Students, TAs and instructors have been struggling with the high assessment load.
- Using an individual course workload calculator such as this one from Wake Forest University can be a helpful guide. The goal is to have students spending no more than 8-10 hours per week on average on a course, including time to complete assessments. Do not include scheduled pauses (Undergraduate Calendar) in your calculations.
- Only assess your course’s intended learning outcomes.
- Although more frequent, lower-stakes assessments are advisable to keep students engaged, remember that students are generally taking a full course load. Ideally, aim to have no more than one deliverable, of any kind, each week and consider introducing some flexibility, such as in due dates or by dropping the lowest score(s) in a series of similar assessments.
- Help students with time management and prioritization by being explicit about the time and effort expected for the course overall and for each component. For written tasks like discussion posts, a word limit and/or exemplars provide good indicators. Timed assessments are particularly stressful: doing a mock exam with students and double checking all your questions are helpful.
- Scheduled pauses are intended to support students’ wellness and success. Encourage students to use these times to prepare for the rest of term, which may include studying for upcoming assessments, catching up on readings and assignments, and/or taking time for rest and personal wellness. No work should be due during scheduled pauses. In addition, please remember the purpose of the pauses and avoid scheduling new work to be completed during a pause.
- Consistent deadlines for assessments are helpful, but where possible programs could coordinate to avoid overlapping assignment deadlines or peak workloads.
Students are feeling overwhelmed with the amount of content, and instructors are struggling to keep up with course activities.
- Think about reducing content, including only what is required for students to achieve the course learning outcomes. If you provide additional material that is for interest only, make that very explicit.
- Factor in extra time when determining the amount of content to include in your course. Students may take longer to process information online because they are working independently, they can replay and reread material, and they may experience slow or unreliable connectivity.
- Instructors have found the LEARN Course Templates very helpful for quickly creating a well-organized course overall.
The are also additional strategies for developing and teaching online in the Strategies for Remote Teaching section.
