Founding member of the EF Student Wellbeing CoP Curriculum Project Group.

I am a founding member of the EF Student Wellbeing CoP Curriculum Project Group, alongside Dr Leesa Sidhu, Professor Jacquelyn Cranny, Professor Nalini Pather, Dr Jessica Macer-Wright, Dr Ben Kelly, Dr Gavin Mount, Dr LeBard, Nalini Pather, Philippa Louey, Gayani Ranawake, which worked together in 2020 to devise a wellbeing intervention using SDT to support our students in the online environment. In normal circumstances, educators can easily create learning environments in which we design and deliver curricula that support the three basic psychological needs (relatedness, competence and autonomy) posited by SDT. I wanted us to enhance student wellbeing in our PMQ cohort, but we knew that achieving this online would be challenging. Our approach consisted of four strategies we theorised would better meet students’ needs, and result in increased wellbeing. We surveyed the students at the end of term and found all strategies were rated positively by our students; indeed student wellbeing and the overall rating of the course remained healthy despite the pandemic disruption, and student feedback was positive. I presented this work at the UNSW M&H Forum 2020, at an online UNSW webinar in 2021 (Pro Vice-Chancellor Education and Student Experience portfolio) in early 2021, and the work was presented at the STARS conference in 2021.

PDF, 0.08MB
Curricular approaches to supporting student academic success and wellbeing