The new normal for universities?

As countries slowly begin to emerge from lock-down, universities have been busy trying to work out what the new landscape will look like come the Autumn of 2020 and the new academic year. In this third post of what has now become a series, I’m looking ahead to anticipate what teaching and learning at universities might look like this next year and how that could impact on students’ and staff mental health and well-being. My previous posts on this issue started with looking at the huge uncertainty we all faced as we started into lock-down at the end of March (Coronavirus: taking one day at a time…). At the end of May we saw the first shoots here in the UK of a lessening of restrictions (Coronavirus 2: emerging from lock-down) and the tentative approach we have been making at balancing risks (perceived and real) with the benefits of beginning to move around again and re-start the economy.

Tense, nervous headaches…?

During these last three months university teaching, learning and assessment has continued in various modified forms, but all essentially online - a mixture of pre-recorded material, guided reading, online assessments and exams, live webinars and Q&A sessions and lots of Zoom, Teams, Skype-type interactions. In fact, we have all being living ‘in the screen’, in itself a tiring - sometimes even exhausting - experience for many, grappling maybe with a dodgy old laptop or inadequate bandwidth. And that’s if you have even had any reliable internet access at all where you’ve been in isolation. Many will not have had a well-appointed office or desk from which to work in peace and quiet, let alone a nice bookcase to show off as your background!

There is a different focus to paying attention to on-screen activity. It’s tiring. And it’s readily exacerbated by poor posture, limited privacy creating added tension in the body, eye strain, headaches, backache etc. All of which adds to stress and anxiety. Am I keeping up? What if the internet crashes during an exam? How will Covid-19 be taken into account in my results, if at all? What does the future hold? (Hint: we can never actually know, but we can waste a lot of time and energy worrying about it, instead of focusing on now.)

Mixed-mode delivery - what is that?

Of course, lots of universities and institutions have been offering online and distance learning courses for years. But this shift to online learning for all has been rapid, accelerating a trend maybe by several or many years. Is there any going back? Should there be? And what will the new academic year now look like?

Most UK universities are preparing to offer ‘mixed-mode’ teaching at all levels for the 2020-21 academic year. There is an expectation that it will not be possible to cram 150-250 people or more into a single sweaty lecture theatre, given current and maybe even foreseeable Covid-19 social/physical distancing rules that might be in operation. Of course we have had health risks before - the regular autumn infection among whole cohorts with colds and flu, and other more serious risks like glandular fever or meningitis, but Covid-19 is different, even if it is a relatively low risk for most university students because of their typical age range (unless other underlying conditions; see previous blogs). And if we are physically back on university campuses, clearly full social distancing rules won’t still apply (as I am writing this the UK has recently reduced social distancing from two metres to effectively one metre). But any constraint will reduce capacity of lecture theatres to the extent that it would be impossible to timetable lectures as before. There is, though, an increasing recognition that content lectures - the stuff of typical information provision (didactic) lectures - can most readily be provided online, pre-recorded (as video and slides) into bite-sized chunks for easy digestion, supported by guided reading. And that physical presence of students on campus can best be used for interaction among students and staff, in smaller groups, in labs, in field work etc, where physical distancing and other mitigation measures are likely to be easier and may even become the new normal. This builds on and accelerates an existing trend for greater interaction in university learning, and a desire to minimise passive teaching. Interaction builds wider skills and competencies, and makes learning more effective.

But that does beg the question of what a university experience is really about. I’ve posted often on the concept of mindful learning, of being in the present moment enjoying the process of learning, rather than fixated about the outcomes (exam or assessment results). Having present moment awareness and engagement in the process of learning is also about having contact with your surroundings, and people - your friends and colleagues (and staff) and the mutual learning from each other that occurs, formally and informally. Most graduates would probably recognise - maybe only after their course - that much of their real learning happened outside of the course, through the diversity of cultures and backgrounds of their peers, of the opportunities afforded by university clubs and societies, and interactions with industry, businesses, charities and policy makers. A university experience is so much more than the content of the course being studied. And many of the skills that employers want are acquired through those other activities; the degree result is not the sole or even the most important factor for them.

Challenges and opportunities for well-being….

While remote, online access has enabled greater access for some to mental health services and online therapy during Covid-19 lock-down, the isolation and restrictions - and illness and even death of loved-ones - have also created their own mental health concerns. People are social creatures, and university for many is where life-long friends - and partners - are made. Online might be good for maintaining contact, but not for enduring relationships.

So key to the new academic year and the provisions being put in place by universities will be the added opportunities created for social and informal networking and interaction. Students will demand it, and rightly so.

Staff too, by the way, need the interaction as much as the students. Even while remote working has facilitated greater flexibility in working than may have been thought possible beforehand, it has also created its own problems as staff cope with juggling multiple demands on their time. Child or adult caring responsibilities, home schooling, potential and real redundancies and increased workload and deadlines - all have an impact on university staff across the board creating added stress.

Should I even go to uni this year?

That’s a question many will be asking, given all the potential challenges and differences - will it be a real university experience? Well - maybe also ask yourself the opposite question - why not? If you are about to embark on a three or four year undergraduate course or PhD research, lots of things will happen over that timescale, and Covid-19 may not even be the most important - who knows? And if you’re looking to do a one-year Masters course, then maybe it’s an opportunity to graduate at a time when your skills are really going to be needed. ‘Build back better’ is the new mantra, and you could be a part of that. And in any case, there will always be challenges and events that can throw things awry, or that offer opportunities. Coping with those challenges and learning from them is a core part of building your own resilience for the future, and has the added benefit of providing real evidence of employability at the end. There is a theory used in career planning of ‘planned happenstance’, of responding to and creating the opportunities that, serendipitously, happen to put you in the right place at the right time. You do have some agency in all of this; you can help create your own luck.

And finally….

I return to where we started back in March - understanding how anxiety and worry are natural responses to stressful circumstances, but exacerbated by excessive thinking - worry. And this in turn affects our perceptions of relative risk, and how we feel about venturing out and mixing with others again (see Coronavirus 2 blog). We struggle with our feelings and believe our thoughts as if they’re real. Which also brings us back to controlling what you can control and not expending emotional time and energy worrying about things over which we have no control (as if worrying might find the answer, except that it never does). And just as we went into lock-down, so now as we emerge from it there are some helpful actions we can be taking:

• Don’t spend time worrying about things over which you have no control – shift instead to more practical problem solving focused on the things you can control; get creative.

• Do use mindfulness and relaxation techniques to help sit with anxiety and allow it to pass, rather than struggle with it (see exercise below).

• Do begin to ‘test the waters’ - one step at a time, taking appropriate precautions, gradually extending your activity range beyond your immediate locale (unless you need to ‘shield’ yourself because of underlying health concerns).

• Do recognise that uncertainty is inevitable and normal; you can never know what the future holds, though you can help shape it by acting in the present.

• Do things that are important to you; if that means the subject you want to do at university, then now is probably as good a time to do it as any. What else would you be doing otherwise?

For me, delivering resilience skills training online or in-person (as well as one-to-one therapy), is likely to be even more important in this coming year. Resilience skills training can be delivered very effectively in online, interactive webinar-style format. Increasing awareness and understanding of how our feelings, thoughts and behaviours interact and affect out responses to stressful situations lies at the heart of enhancing personal, life-long well-being alongside the use of simple, practical techniques.

So, here’s a simple, mindfulness acceptance exercise you can try for yourself - it’s drawn from the model of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) that I use a lot in resilience skills training and in therapy. It’s a metaphor for not struggling with your emotions; accepting them instead as a normal part of human experience. Just take a seat and give it a go!

Good luck for the coming academic year!

Bill Sheate, 2 July 2020