Online learners must often “mind the gap” in institutional and faculty support for their mental health and well-being. Attendees will learn how faculty can practice a compassionate approach, teach effective stress management, empathize, and identify distress in online learners. This session will provide tips, resources, and demonstrate short mindfulness exercises.

According to a recent national survey, 65% of faculty believe that student mental health has “significantly worsened” since the beginning of their career, and 87% felt that it had worsened since COVID. Almost 80% of faculty reported having at least one conversation with a student about their mental health and wellness. However, only 51% of faculty reported having a good sense of how to recognize a student in emotional or mental distress, a major shortcoming in providing support for all students in need (Mary Christie Foundation, 2021). Just as many faculty feel under-prepared for the current student population’s mental health needs, students are also under-prepared to cope, de-stress, and find appropriate resources while in college. An estimated 73% of learners experience some form of mental health disturbance during their academic journey (The Mental Health Coalition, 2024). Yet many learners, especially those in their first year, do not know who to turn to at their institution for mental health support. In fact, only about 25% of students with a mental health concern seek help (The Mental Health Coalition, 2024). This problem can be significantly exacerbated for online learners without a physical campus or counseling center. For students who shifted to online learning during the pandemic and students at online-first institutions, mental health support can be harder to access and deep connections with others more difficult to forge and sustain (Abdelrahman, Wang & Chen, 2022). The Online Learning Consortium’s partnership with Uwill highlights the recent escalation of mental health struggles for online learners, as well as a growing interest from the online education community to provide appropriate and holistic support for these learners (OLC, 2024). Post-traditional online learners, who are outside of the traditional 18-to-22 year-old age range and often balancing college with other competing demands on their time, are also at significant risk of experiencing mental health issues. Misconceptions about adult learners “having it together” can contribute to minimizing or hiding the mental health struggles they may face, making it more difficult for these students to ask for and get the help they need (Lee, 2019). Online learners, in other words, must often “mind the gap” in institutional and classroom support services for their mental health and well-being. This session will address how a combination of classroom instruction, a compassionate approach to individual learners’ mental health and well-being needs, and referrals to resources and professional services across the virtual campus and beyond can help to close this gap. This session draws on both scholarly research and practical experience at an online university that caters primarily to post-traditional adult learners who are balancing schoolwork with full-time jobs, family obligations, and sometimes military service. Competing demands on their time, coupled with financial worries and a lack of sleep, account for many of the mental health and well-being struggles seen in online adult learners. This stress may manifest in behaviors and warning signs such as procrastination, incomplete, poor quality, or declining quality work, absence or inconsistent participation, consistently late work, irritability, over-dependency on the faculty member, anxiousness, signs of substance abuse, or using words and phrases indicative of distress, such as “overwhelmed,” “hopeless,” or “so tired.” This session will begin with an interactive virtual poll with attendees to better understand and highlight the extent of the problem in our online classrooms and the current gaps that exist for both students and faculty across institutions. It will then cover how preventative measures and “protective resources” can be scaffolded across the university curriculum and institutional culture (Lee, 2019). This includes making time in courses for topics such as time management, resilience, coping skills, stress management techniques like mindfulness and visualization, community building, and building student awareness of resources to help across the university and beyond. Next, the session will examine how faculty can look out for signs of stress, emotional dysregulation, burnout, and serious crises such as hopelessness or self-harm through their interactions with students online. It will show faculty how to identify signs of distress and then follow up with empathy, accommodation, and referrals. This includes approaching each individual student in distress with compassion, acknowledgment, connection, and active listening, providing accommodations on coursework as needed, and referring students to other university departments, professional counseling, and crisis hotlines as needed. This session will actively engage attendees in conversations about mental health and well-being support at their institutions and where their students and faculty must “mind the gap.” It will also equip attendees to implement the session’s takeaways at their home institution by providing a resource toolkit with links to resources including national crisis support contact information, videos, and articles on online learner mental health and well-being support that can be scaffolded into their curriculum or used as wraparound support options. Finally, supporting students’ mental health and well-being is not without cost to the faculty who undertake this work. Indeed, 21% of faculty feel that supporting students in emotional distress has taken a toll on their own mental health. This number increases significantly for female, transgender, non-binary, genderqueer, and gender non-confirming faculty (Mary Christie Foundation, 2021). Burnout, stress, and emotional dysregulation are common amongst online educators just as these issues impact the students they serve. To likewise focus on closing gaps in faculty well-being, this session will close with a final interactive exercise in which attendees will also have a moment to pause, breathe, and ground themselves during the session by practicing some short mindfulness and visualization techniques led by an expert clinical psychologist. These exercises can be used by attendees to recenter and de-stress in the moment and can also be replicated and adopted for use with students in their own classrooms. References: Abdelrahman, E., Wang, J. & Chen, J. (November 30, 2022). Association between college course delivery model and rates of psychological distress during the COVID-19 pandemic. JAMA Network Open 5(11): doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2022.44270 Lee, K. (February 27, 2019). Supporting mental health and wellness for adult learners. The Evolllution. https://evolllution.com/attracting-students/todays_learner/supporting-mental-health-and-wellness-for-adult-learners Mary Christie Foundation, Boston University School of Public Health, The Health Minds Network, and Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation (2021). The role of faculty in student mental health. https://marychristieinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/The-Role-of-Faculty-in-Student-Mental-Health.pdf The Mental Health Coalition (2024). The college student mental health crisis: What to know. https://www.thementalhealthcoalition.org/college-mental-health-toolkit/ OLC (March 1, 2024). Online Learning Consortium and Uwill announce partnership. OLC Insights, https://onlinelearningconsortium.org/olc-uwill-announce-partnership/