Support Student Well-being

WatSEE-aligned Actions

  • Adopt course processes that positively impact student well-being and the teaching team (e.g., course policies, expectations, workload)
  • Promote equity in students’ experiences and outcomes by incorporating growth mindset and sense of belonging strategies into your course outline’s messages, policies and practices
  • Apply inclusive pedagogical principles (e.g., slip days, smaller lower stakes assessments, drop lowest score, 35% test weights, accessible teaching strategies and materials, timing coordination with core courses)
  • Provide clear written course and assessment expectations
  • Create a positive environment that respects diversity (e.g., use inclusive language, model respect, strive to learn student names)
  • Foster a sense of belonging (e.g., normalize but don’t minimize academic stress or lived experience, learn how to respond to students in distress, refer students to supports and services)
  • Foster a growth mindset (e.g., share own academic and personal challenges while a student, communicate ability can be improved and developed, provide constructive feedback on how students can improve, give low stakes chances for students to ‘fail’ and learn from it)
  • Embed community-building activities into your course
  • Integrate movement breaks into class to increase performance and well-being, considering student ability, for example:
    • Stretching
    • Interactive peer exercise (placing sticky-notes on boards)
    • Permission to stand or get out of the chair during class, if able
  • Learn how to respond to students in distress and how to interact with disabled students’ assistive devices (e.g., wheelchair, guide, listening aid)
  • Reflect in course design and practices that an academic accommodation is a legal responsibility, not a favour; it removes barriers that exclude students, and it does not reduce rigour or academic integrity
  • Consider in your course practices that the way your nervous system responds to sensory stimuli (e.g., fluorescent lights, perfumes/colognes) may not represent all students
  • Employ trauma-informed pedagogical strategies, such as:
    • Understand that students notably vary in their life experiences and that trauma (one-time, ongoing, or generational) impacts their learning and behaviour
    • Provide a transparent course outline regarding instructional decision-making
    • Promote safety by fostering healthy relationships with students and among students
    • Ensure students know what to expect regarding upcoming difficult content and provide on- and off-ramps to potentially disturbing material (e.g., give students voice and choice where possible regarding participation and assessment)
    • Discuss how language in historical documents, media, and materials may not reflect how we view and describe ideas now
  • Adopt strategies that support Black, Indigenous, racialized, 2SLGBTQ+, disabled, and other historically underrepresented students
  • Encourage students to determine how they should mediate their UWaterloo experience and support their well-being via organized activities (e.g., sports), unstructured activities (e.g., crafts), and/or university services and supports
  • Use the Postsecondary Course Accessibility Guide to review and improve accessibility in your course pertaining to:
    • Course outline: instruction and assessment formats, processes and policies, and essential requirements
    • Course organization and navigation: LEARN setup of modules and assessments
    • Course materials: instructor-created course content (e.g., lecture slides) and other source content (e.g., textbooks), assessments and learning activities, and educational technologies
    • Communication barriers
    • Physical learning space barriers