Student Mental Wellbeing: A Learning & Teaching Perspective Stef Black Development Consultant, sparqs Katie Gowing Student Health Project Consultant, NUS Scotland

Background Student Mental Health and well-being was clearly identified as a priority area of work for student officers and institutions through our training and consultation exercise and review of Professional Standards in colleges; We were uncertain how sparqs could take this work forward inline with our other areas of work; HEA publication ‘Embedding mental wellbeing in the curriculum: maximising success in higher education’, started to think about it from a L&T POV. Developments over last year to compliment work by NUS and institutions, and how we can support them, including how we could embed the work/ L&T section in SMHA.

What is Think Positive? Healthy Body Healthy Mind Awards (HBHM) since 2011 Student Mental Health Agreement Project (SMHA) since 2015 How it sits within NUS Scotland. Outcome agreements.

Overview of the SMHA project Brings the student association and their institution together to work in partnership. The SMHA brigs together all of the things the institution is focussing on that year around mental health and collates it into one clear easy to read document. The project encourages staff to review existing policy, staff training opportunities and consider a range of improvements which could have a positive impact on the staff and student experience.

Overview of the SMHA project The same nine step process is taken forward by all participating institutions. No two SMHA are the same, the project encompasses the wide variety of student needs and campus differences. Aims to create a whole institutional approach and believe that everyone in the institution has a role to play.

Why do we want to be involved with this new project? We’d love to hear more about examples of best practise as well as examples of work which has had a negative impact on student mental health. Were exploring how these could be included in a SMHA, this could be by giving examples of the work to institutions or by creating a compulsory working area on positive learning and teaching practises in relation to student mental health.

Student Learning Experience (SLE) Student Learning Experience; you may be familiar with this tool - designed by sparqs as a way to categorise areas for discussion and feedback from students to make it easier to understand problem areas. The tool is used in our course rep training to help course reps break down the often vague idea of the learning experience into practical, bitesize chunks. It means that reps can ask their fellow students specific, meaningful questions around each of the areas of the learning experience, allowing student input to be mapped across various headings to ensure it is broad-ranging.

Activity Seven headings relating to the SLE around the room – in pairs/small groups, work your way around as many headings as possible; Within each area, there are prompts and questions to think about with regards to student mental health and well-being; On yellow post-its, capture your answers, solutions, challenges etc. to the questions; On pink post-its, highlight any area of best practice you are already aware of, either from your own college, or elsewhere.

What next? Future work of the project – we are not sure yet, but we want it to be informed by YOU! This exercise, along with other consultation exercises will help shape the work; Pilot group – to test changes and see what has the biggest impact; Sign up sheet if you would like to be kept informed, or involved in the next stage.