Promoting Student Well-Being Through Classroom Interventions

Underlying Theory

The pandemic disrupted many factors that impact motivation. According to incentive theory (Ryan & Deci, 2000), intrinsically or extrinsically rewarding factors motivate people to act. As education has gone online, there may be less incentive to participate in class. Education’s extrinsic rewards of financial stability and job security may also be looking questionable in the current economic climate.

In addition to being motivated by rewards, the need to achieve and feel competent is also important (Elliot & Dweck, 2005). As students have had to restrict normal activities, there are fewer opportunities to experience feelings of accomplishment. There may also be new periods of unstructured time that lend themselves to indulgences such as bingeing on streaming video services, which do not tend to produce feelings of achievement. Others have had to get full time jobs or take on additional roles such as caregiver or home-school teacher that challenge a personal sense of competence. Any of these experiences may diminish motivation.

Additionally, a loss of motivation, sometimes described as an inability to “get going” may be a symptom of depression (fifth ed.; DSM-5; American Psychiatric Association, 2013). Reported rates of depression in March and April 2020 were triple the rates before the onset of COVID-19 (Ettman et al., 2020). During late June, 40% of United States adults reported struggling with mental health or substance use issues with younger adults, racial/ethnic minorities, essential workers, and unpaid adult caregivers reporting disproportionally worse mental health (Czeisler et al., 2020). Mental health suffers after community-level disasters because initial resources and efforts target immediate physical crises and needs at the bottom of Maslow (1970)’s hierarchy such as safety, food, and housing. Only once the immediate physical threat has been contained do efforts turn to addressing mental health needs (Roberts & Ottens, 2005). It has been difficult to make this transition given the protracted impact of COVID-19 with multiple waves and new variants. Complicating matters, when mental health resources are provided, they are not equitably available to people from racial and ethnic minority groups which further exacerbates the disparities highlighted by COVID-19 (Lederer et al., 2021).

In the Classroom

Faculty can help students understand the factors that impact motivation and how to increase it by exploring not only theories, but also providing practical advice that can be used beyond the classroom. Teaching students about goal setting theory (Locke & Latham, 2019) and helping them craft specific, short term goals for the week or the term can boost motivation in class. Incorporating brief accountability group check-ins where students report to groupmates about the progress made toward goals since the prior meeting can both build community and increase performance toward goals (Davis et al., 2007).

Alternately, instructors can frame the connection between motivation and mood within a unit about abnormal psychology, discussing the loss of motivation as a symptom of a mood disorder. There are more disorders included in the DSM than can be covered in any term, so deciding what to include and what to leave out is always a choice instructors face. This is particularly true in introductory psychology courses when there may only be one or two class sessions earmarked for this topic. In introductory psychology, instead of trying to cover as many disorders as possible, it may be helpful to use the limited class time as an opportunity to provide psychoeducation.

Psychoeducation, a therapeutic intervention first used for patients with schizophrenia (Lukens & McFarlane, 2004), is simply providing patients with basic information about their illness and tools for managing symptoms. Beyond use with schizophrenia, there is now evidence that psychoeducation can be effective as a part of treatment programs for bipolar disorder, depression, anxiety, and general psychological distress (Lukens & McFarlane, 2004). Although instructors may not feel “qualified” to offer psychoeducation, they may take heart to know that a meta-analysis examining the effectiveness of passive psychoeducation yielded a small, but significant effect in the reduction of depression, anxiety, and psychological distress symptoms (Donker et al., 2009). Passive psychoeducation included acts as simple as providing readings, pamphlets, or links to informational websites. Psychoeducation can also help shift behaviors. For example, following brief psychoeducation-based interventions, students are more likely to refer others to professional help (Litteken & Sale, 2018) and be more open to seeking help themselves (Jorm et al., 2003).

In the classroom, psychoeducation can help students understand that there is rarely a hard line between normal and abnormal. Many behaviors and symptoms exist along a continuum, with one end representing everyday human experiences and the other being severe and persistent mental illness. For instance, students may benefit from understanding that increased anxiety, anger, inability to feel pleasure, and dissociation—feeling disconnected from the body—are all considered normal, not pathological, reactions to trauma. Trauma can result from exposure to actual or threatened death, injury, or violence (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). Events related to the COVID-19 pandemic, unrest due to racial injustice or politics, as well as potential displacements and loss due to natural disasters such as wildfires and hurricanes may be current or recent sources of trauma.

In addition to the aforementioned reactions to trauma, significant changes in sleep, irritability, difficulty concentrating, lack of motivation, fatigue, guilt, worry, headaches, and muscle tension may be present (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). Symptoms become clinically significant when they persist over time (generally most of the day, nearly every day, for at least 2 weeks), cause distress and impairment, or become so serious that they require hospitalization (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). However, if symptoms are transient, they can be considered a natural response to situational stressors. Instructors can teach students not only what these symptoms look like, but also that they are to be expected (up to a point), help students contextualize what they are feeling, and potentially cue them to seek out additional sources of support when needed. Faculty can reduce a barrier to seeking professional help—not knowing where to find it—by ending lectures with a slide of resources such as the campus counseling center, the National Suicide Prevention Hotline (800-273-8255), state warmlines, and county mental health centers.

Empirically Informed Advice and Assignments

A commonly held belief is that the ability to act is driven by mood. People wait to feel motivated before they act. When people are feeling down, they tell themselves that once they feel better, then they will do something. However, it is often the case that people start to feel better only once they get started.

Acting, and changing what one does to change how one feels is at the heart of Behavioral Activation, an evidence-based treatment for depression (Dobson et al., 2008). Importantly, action can and should occur even if someone does not feel like doing so. This may seem counterintuitive but is particularly important for people experiencing symptoms of depression and anxiety. A natural reaction is to want to do less, however doing less eventually shrinks a person’s world. As a result, people experience fewer rewarding experiences, both intrinsic and extrinsic, and have less opportunity to feel achievement and competence. This becomes a vicious cycle. Ceasing to experience occasions that naturally bring joy and happiness worsens depression and anxiety symptoms, leading people to do even less. Disrupting the cycle by intentionally introducing small, naturally reinforcing behaviors into a person’s schedule can help to reverse this effect. The example assignment (Ibaraki, 2021) provides an example of how to help students engage in this practice. This could also be used as an orienting activity at the beginning of a term or a new unit to help students focus on goals and build in opportunities for activation.

Underlying Theory

The motivation for human connection and a need to feel a sense of belonging is an innate and fundamental part of the human experience (Baumeister & Leary, 1995). Connection to others buffers physical (Yang et al., 2016) and mental (Baumeister & Leary, 1995) health. Conversely, an unmet need to belong is associated with increased feelings of loneliness (Hawkley & Cacioppo, 2010). Feelings of loneliness do not necessarily come from the act of being alone. Under the right conditions, people choose to be alone and find that experience refreshing and enjoyable.

Loneliness comes from when the reality of social relationships does not match up with the desired state of social relationships (Hawkley & Cacioppo, 2010). For example, students might be longing for the standing weekly coffee date with friends, where over warm beverages they caught up with each other’s lives and hugged as they departed. Instead, their reality is an unfulfilling Zoom call in the kitchen. Framing loneliness as the discrepancy between what people want and what they have in relationships may help students to understand why, even if they live with others, are going to in-person school or work, or are participating in 12 Zoom calls per day, they feel lonely.

In the Classroom

Common topics that connect to this area include Baumeister and Leary (1995)’sTheory of Belongingness as well as the inclusion of belongingness and love just above safety in Maslow (1970)’s hierarchy. The classic Robbers Cave experiment (Sherif, 1956), commonly used to teach about superordinate goals and intergroup conflict, can also be an example of how quickly humans form social bonds. More contemporary examples include the psychological toll of social exclusion and bullying, and the shared patterns of activation in the brain when experiencing social and physical pain (Sturgeon & Zautra, 2016). Helping students understand how deeply the need to belong exists within us, and how connection and loneliness are connected to physical and psychological well-being, may help students gain appropriate perspective as to why the social and physical distancing necessitated by COVID-19 is so difficult.

Empirically Informed Advice and Assignments

A meta-analysis of 50 studies examining loneliness interventions identified four common strategies for improving loneliness: Improving social skills, enhancing social support, increasing opportunities for social interaction, and addressing deficits in social cognition (Masi et al., 2011). Although addressing deficits in social cognition, primarily through the provision of cognitive behavioral therapy, showed the largest effect size, all forms of interventions showed benefits. Of these interventions, enhancing social support and increasing opportunities for social interactions have the best potential to be incorporated into classroom settings and assignments. Creating small, stable, discussion groups in online classes or simply letting students converse casually or respond to a fun question before class can increase the opportunities for regular and meaningful social interactions. Additionally, assignments can be designed to enhance existing sources of social support. Expressing gratitude toward others is a great way to boost mood and deepen existing social bonds. Interventions to increase someone’s recognition of what they have to be grateful for have been successfully used with older adults who experience loneliness (Killen & Macaskill, 2015).

Underlying Theory

Stressors are events that challenge a person’s ability to cope and threaten their well-being (Biggs et al., 2017). COVID-19 is a particularly harmful stressor because in addition to directly threatening physical health, it has also stripped predictability and control. There is so much uncertainty surrounding the current COVID-19 situation including health, employment and finances, personal risk, and frequently shifting protocols. This uncertainty makes it difficult to make long term plans and this inability to plan amplifies feelings of a loss of control. Lack of predictability and control are major psychological stressors (Sapolsky, 2004).

Coping skills are strategies that can be used to reduce the impact of stress. A recent study of 2031 college students found that 71% reported increased stress and anxiety related to the pandemic but that less than half felt that they knew how to cope with that stress (Wang et al., 2020). Without appropriate coping skills, a chronic stress reaction and heightened vigilance in response to a lack of predictability and control, puts students at higher risk for cognitive deficits, burnout, and mental health issues (Marin et al., 2011), as well as a host of physical health problems (Sapolsky, 2004).

In the Classroom

If it is not already a part of the curriculum, a unit or discussion on the neurobiology of stress can be added when teaching about emotions or health psychology. Even prior to the pandemic, exposure to chronic stress was not evenly distributed across the population. In general, people with lower income, education levels, and social status experience higher levels of stress (Thoits, 2010). Discrimination also functions as a stressor, and members of minority groups report higher levels of stress-related physical and mental health consequences, compared to their non-minority peers (Thoits, 2010). The pandemic has underscored these inequities. The burden of illness from COVID-19 has disproportionately impacted Black, Latinx, and indigenous communities (Stokes et al., 2020). As teachers, we should be mindful that while all students may be struggling in their own way, some students may be facing additional layers of challenge that would benefit from commensurate levels of understanding, support, and any efforts we can undertake to help reduce stress.

If a lack of predictability and control are common psychological stressors, we can structure our courses to maximize predictability and student control. For example, having assignments due at the same time of day on the same day of the week aids with predictability. Offering students’ options within an assignment, asking students to complete a certain number of assignments from a larger pool, or dropping a certain number of low scores give students some control. When teaching about sensitive subjects and using materials that contain first person accounts such as interviews or memoirs, allowing students to view the material on their own rather than in a group setting gives the student control to take breaks or fast forward through material that may be particularly stressful (Zurbriggen, 2011).

Emphasizing predictability and control is also consistent with trauma-informed educational practice, a framework which draws from a trauma-informed care approach (Carello & Butler, 2015). Trauma-informed educational practice is important because trauma histories are incredibly common. A large, multi-site study of college students found an 85% lifetime prevalence rate and a 21% 2-month point prevalence rate for exposure to trauma (Frazier et al., 2009). This suggests that it is reasonable to assume that there are trauma survivors in any class taught. Although a full discussion of trauma-informed educational practice is beyond the scope of this paper (see Carello & Butler, 2015 and Zurbriggen, 2011 for resources), working to build a classroom that maximizes a student’s sense of safety, predictability, and control models trauma-informed principles. Efforts here will benefit all students because when students are too overwhelmed, the stress can negatively impact memory retrieval, the ability to update memories to incorporate new information, and ultimately, the ability to learn (Vogel & Schwabe, 2016).

Empirically Informed Advice and Assignments

A broad distinction in coping strategies is between emotion-focused and problem-focused coping. Emotion-focused coping tries to reduce the negative feelings and emotions that accompany stress. It is most appropriate for situations that cannot be changed or are out of a person’s control, such as the stress that accompanies waiting for medical test results to come back. Examples of emotion-focused coping include eating comforting foods, praying, journaling, distractions, obtaining emotional support, or mindfulness practices. Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction, a combination of mindfulness meditation, yoga, and aspects of cognitive therapy, has been shown to be effective in reducing stress in clinical and nonclinical populations, including college students (Bamber & Schneider, 2016). Faculty who are comfortable bringing mindfulness practices into the classroom can find hundreds of guided meditations available on YouTube and many free mindfulness apps. A brief guided meditation can be used to open or close a class session.

Problem-focused coping helps individuals identify a discrete problem that is causing stress and works toward a solution. Examples of problem-focused coping include structured problem solving, time management, communication training, and seeking out instrumental social support. Problem-focused coping is most helpful when the source of the stress is something that a person could influence, such as stress from an upcoming exam. The loss of predictability and control during COVID-19 may trick some students into feeling like they lack agency over the entirety of their life, when in reality there are problem-focused skills they could be implementing to reduce their stress. Instructors can help students differentiate between what is and is not within their control. They can further empower students by providing the tools they need to solve the problems that are fixable. An example of a structured problem-solving assignment, a problem-focused coping tool, is provided (Ibaraki, 2021).

Engaging in self-care practices is also a commonly suggested technique to cope with stress. The current prevailing conceptualization of self-care is highly individualistic, which includes activities such as taking a warm bath or aromatherapy. These activities share the characteristics that they are initiated by and generally only impact the individual. This neglects the fact that people may be stressed and in need of self-care, not because of their own actions, but as a response to broader social systems that give rise to stress. In these cases, care, energy, and action may be better spent addressing the underlying problem—systemic practices that create and perpetuate stressful conditions. For example, there is evidence that engaging in political activism can help mitigate stress caused by racial/ethnic discrimination for Latinx college students (Hope et al., 2018). A recent study of Black American adults found that those who actively supported Black Lives Matter reported better physical health compared to those who just knew about the movement (Seaton et al., 2020). Engaging in collective action is also consistent with another principle of trauma-informed education practice, empowerment. In a classroom setting, build empowerment into the curriculum by having students take part in a social action project, write a letter to the editor of the local paper about a topic connected to course content, or engage in active problem solving around stressors that are interfering with full class participation (Zurbriggen, 2011).