Stress Busters
By Leon Escarez, Tats Makalinao, Nina San Andres and Julia Sy (Ateneo SALT Interns)
As part of our internship at the Ateneo SALT Institute, we were tasked to investigate the challenges that students and teachers face in online learning. Looking into this problem, we wanted to create a solution that would help address common challenges that LS students and teachers face in this setting. One common theme that emerged from our research is that students need a way to manage, not just their learning, but also the stress that they feel in going through online courses. We wanted to design something that will help students, while they are learning. This resulted in our idea: “Stress busters”.
Our team designed “check-in” pages on the online learning platform, Canvas. Teachers can easily use and integrate these pages into their own course modules to help promote student’s well-being and mental health. Focusing on students’ experiences and context, we came up with four (4) module categories:
- Ice-Breaker Pages: It can be hard to open up to one another at first. These Ice-breaker pages can help the class get to know one another in a fun and exciting way. Integrate these during the orientation, back to school settings, or just in getting to know your class better.
- Check-in pages: As a teacher it is important to know how your students are doing. Use these pages for multiple fun ways that students can let you know how they’re doing. These pages can be integrated in the canvas courses weekly and especially during mid semester/finals and hell weeks.
- Mental Health break pages: Mental health is especially important at a time like this. Use these pages to help provide students with suggestions and tools that may help with their mental health.
- The Novel Coping Tips/Tools pages: Every student needs a time to relax and wind down in between classes. Use these pages containing tips and tools that can help students relax and unwind during their breaks.
Each module category includes at least (10) pages and with curated and created content that can be used in synchronous sessions and asynchronous activity boards. This includes a number of embedded websites that may provide stress relief (or at least encourage brief breaks or shots of fun) for the students.
Check out the guide below on how to integrate Stress Busters into your course. Ateneo SALT believes that there is unlimited potential in terms of making the experience of online education as engaging and fun as possible for both the students and the teachers and we hope that inserting stress busters in online courses will be of help. We hope you can try these out in your courses! If you have any feedback on the materials, please email salt@ateneo.edu.