 Again, let me welcome everybody. Welcome to the Future of Trends Forum. I'm delighted to see you here today We have some really really great guests. I'm really looking forward to our conversation about an extremely important topic For the past few years we've been hosting several sessions explicitly devoted to mental health on campus COVID is one of the causes of that as were other factors including changes to politics as well as changing expectations of campus services and we've been also seeing this theme of mental health stretch across all of our other sessions Everything from what we're talking about climate change to professional development to publication even Now I'm really grateful to have some really really good Speakers some people who can speak to us and listen to us about mental health on campus. We have three of them including A guest who all of you loved last time I want to bring them up on stage one by one So let's begin with Stephanie Moore who is a professor at the University of New Mexico And greeting Stephanie Hi, everyone glad to have so many folks here. Oh, it's good to see you. Thank you for coming Listen, Stephanie. Um, we introduce ourselves in a futuristic way here on the forum We ask people what you're working on for the next year. So I'm curious what what projects what classes what publications but But also what ideas are you most looking forward to for the next year? um Yeah, most of it right now So I've been doing quite a bit of work really on um ethics and educational technology for a long time now and one of the things that has been on my hot seat for a long time is that um We have not really situated accessibility in context of learning theories. Um, in particular, uh, we talk a lot about accessibility But we need to do a much better job theorizing that and and then testing designs that we might develop around Yeah, you know multimedia or whatever and actually be able to answer the question. Well Did we make it more accessible and and what does that really mean? So That's a big initiative and then I'm going to be establishing an ethics and learning design lab here and then Probably just always continuing all the work on online learning and and some work around Adult learning and adult literacy is as components to that too Wow I know Never stay still here Uh, I benefit from your work in general But if if you have any article or presentation about Theorizing educational technology in terms of accessibility coming up. Please let me know I teach a class in ed tech and I'm looking for good readings on accessibility And I usually end up pointing people to the universal design for learning website Straight, but I would love to see more Yeah, I'm happy to do that because I'm I'm even going to be trying to resurrect some behaviorism If that which is a dirty word for a lot of people Audrey Yeah, so Wow, great. Well, I'm I'm so glad to hear I was like, well, here let me go your colleagues and co-conspirators up on stage as well Hang out one second So, uh, now I'd like to add uh to the stage fatema mars bond Um, did did I totally destroy your name? I'm sorry It's totally correct Brava, I'm so glad I'm so glad Welcome. So what are you going to be working on for the next year? And first of all, thank you for uh in Having me for this panel As you know, I'm in a dissertation stage right now, so my focus would be in my Research area for dissertation which is about mental fatigue and One part that is actually caused for mental fatigue, which is task interactivity And one has attributes And that we found as a source of mental fatigue for students in online higher education so And there was there is a gap for that one in literature review that we couldn't find more Related uh study on this one specifically for mental fatigue so I choose this area for my dissertation and I will work on it and Of course continue working on my other part of research for mental fatigue As I will part will present one of my another paper for mental fatigue indicators In a r.a. And I am writing I'm writing a paper on mental fatigue and its sources and how we can measure For online learned higher education Oh, that sounds essential Fatima, I would I mean I think everybody involved in teaching online is going to need to know about this so This is this is essential work and and if I could just just for a second say first of all Thank you for coming. I'm really really glad Well, this is my pleasure because one of the things we do on the forum is we like to Celebrate people from all levels of career paths So we've we've hosted retired scholars who are fantastic resources But also early career people because then we can say oh Fatima Marspaugh. I knew her back then Which is great, which is what we love doing And oh, I I'm sure everybody here on this call will be delighted to give you all kinds of advice about your dissertation I'm going to try and hold back So we we need to see it. Thank you. Thank you. Let me add your colleague. Let me add your colleague Hello, Karen Costa. Hello. Hi everyone Welcome back Where is this? Where am I? I'm in massachusetts as always Yeah, I don't venture out much y'all. All right. Well, there's a lot going on there. There's a lot going on Stay home. We're safe. Um, yeah, thank you for having me back. Ryan. I appreciate it I like to surround myself with people who are much smarter than me and My my fellow panelists here are evidence of that. So I'm excited to learn from them Well, you are all three excellent And let me ask Karen again. What are you working on for the next year? What's uh, what's top of mind for you? I am uh, I'm I'm not just saying this because greg is here. Um, I'm working on a book a second book About supporting our adhd learners. So With john's hakins university press So my deadline um is later this year and I'm making fantastic progress. Don't worry. Um, so I'm really I'm really excited. Um, I I just scheduled an interview With rowan university in new jersey, they have a neurodiversity center And we're seeing more of these neurodiversity centers focused on the broad picture of neurodiversity on campus and supporting neurodivergent learners And i'm really excited to to learn with them and to include that in the book Uh, thank you for telling me. I'm actually going to visit that campus later this month. So Oh my gosh. Well, that's a sign. It's all Things are kind of all connected Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Well, it's great to see you and here let me arrange things friends If you're new to the form, uh, I like to uh change the uh setup here so that people can Exist in different parts of the screen I'm going to ask our guests a couple of questions to get things rolling But this form is all about you and I would love to hear what your questions are So both as they speak and as they describe their thinking and their work About mental health resilience and in academia. Think about what you'd like to learn more about So I I I'd like to put one question to all of you right now Which is how are campuses doing at trying to cultivate and support resilience? I hear resilience as a theme everywhere. It seems to be a word that you can't be against I mean, uh, no one wants to be anti-resilient I mean, but how Brian don't speak too soon But there's there's there's no, you know, there's no there's no palatable antonym for that that we can say Right, you know, uh, I want to be brittle. You know, it doesn't quite doesn't quite How are we doing in supporting that kind of resilience? Um, and what are we doing to support resilience? Karen's already laughing at me. She gets to go first Yeah, so, um, I laughed because I I I suppose I'm known as somebody who gets a little fired up What I see in this use of the term resilience So You know and a lot of folks know a lot of my background is in trauma informed education So what I see are a lot of people using resilience as like an individual Encouragement be resilient be resilient Often to deflect from You know social or systemic solutions What I know about resilience is that it is a natural part of our humanity and that it blooms In the face of appropriate support and correct care So I encourage people rather than telling individuals to be resilient rather than telling our students to be resilient Let's design systems of support and get our students access to correct care In order to let their their natural resilience then bloom What would be an example of such a mechanism of support? Um, you know, I use the term correct care a lot. So correct care would look like um, And I just I do want to clarify here. I'm not a clinician. I'm an educator And I am someone with lived experience with mental illness. So I want to put those two things out there So correct care looks like getting our students access to Psychiatrists psychologists and primary care physicians who can help manage help them manage their mental illness So in the in the face of you know getting correct care students naturally are going to bloom That resilience is going to bloom within them when we deny students access to correct care And then tell them to be resilience. We're actually doing additional harm Hmm Thank you. Thank you. That's an excellent excellent answer But team, uh, do you want to take a run at this question? How are campuses? supporting resilience now Um I love current answers and I could say that I can see that the university is increasing their workshops for mental health So to support the students but I also Would like to add that If we can Also academically support the students have services academically that help them to Uh, I actually Manage their academic pressures that would help them to increase their resilience What we do what would such an academic resilience support look like or what's an example of one? like, um as one of source of stress or mental Problem that the students have um Especially in higher level their pressure they have from the Managing their academic works and how they can manage the workload and how they can Even receive guidance from the faculties so Having some sort of programs actually facilitate This part of This first for students that I'm along with faculties would help the students in this regard Excellent that that's a great answer. Thank you very much Um, I'd like to see this. Well, let me let me add to the stage. Um professor more Oh, what do you think what would you have to add about how campuses are supporting resilience? Yeah, I think well, I think there's two Sort of two dimensions that I see so I sat in on a task force for Institutional resilience. Um, I don't know scare quotes are appropriate or not But it it was interesting How First of all how folks got selected for that task force and second of all the perspectives that came Every single member of that task force except for me was in an administrative position And a lot of them also came from like risk mitigation, you know risk management roles within the institution And I in all candor probably about, you know, a little bit into the discussions I was incredibly frustrated with how much the conversation focused on the organizations resilience like the continuation of the institution itself As opposed to actually talking about the individual human beings within the organization And how their ability to to be healthier And to be supported by the institution itself actually contributes to The organization's health and And and resilience so I I think my sense of the conversation has been that it's really been Pulled more towards maintenance of the institution itself In service of that and not really focused on individuals and what it is that we need As part of that and then I I just simply echo What Karen has talking has been talking about The piece that we shared. I think Brian's got it linked here As part of today's forum I was I was writing exactly on this issue of this approach of employee fix by self As a sort of approach to mental health Which is a very limited and limiting approach in a lot of ways and In fact, I think in somewhere in there I was referencing somebody who said, you know, we're taking this very cynical approach To mental health and resilience that basically blames the failures of a system On the individuals and just as well as you would just attend You know yoga training or mindfulness or something like that And if that would just fix yourself and then that would fix us And I think it's a bit of a cynical approach To everything so what I was trying to map out in that piece was really more of a Systems approach to how do we think about what are the different elements within a system? I'm really drawing on like organizational design and human performance And support as part of that But really trying to unpack like what's going on with the policies that we have and how those policies actually Create distance incentives for self-care in the system What should be better policies for that? How are we resourcing individuals? How are we approaching job definitions and clarifying that for people? There's all of these different systemic levers that we have that can really make it Better for folks that aren't just about the organization itself Being resilient, but it's really about how do we help the individuals within? How do we situate them in a much healthier Work environment so that they can they can do what it is that they're there to do That's that's beautifully said Stephanie, I I'm nodding all throughout and I think in you in the chat you can see people grabbing different quotes for you already Including the the great employee fix thyself line Before the three of you started starting answering my my weird question Um, we had a question that came in from our friend in florida Glenn mcgee and he asked us this is resilience macro or micro or both And I I think you're all saying both really if this is something institutions have to respond to caring for individuals And also on multiple levels, but also doing that in a structural and systematic way. Would that be right? I I think so. I mean I so You know again in that piece glenn I I was really writing about it from a very macro systemic perspective um And I think lots of folks who do work in systems engineering You know systems theory things like that Are are going to tend to define resilience in a in a much more macro way You know brian was talking about what's really the the antithesis of resilience Brittle brittle would be that um, you know, you don't typically want brittle um engineered systems like I'm I'm I used to work in engineering some thinking of airplanes as an example um, there's multiple fail safes within those systems so that if I you know problem happens over here It's it's your system architecture actually is not so brittle I don't I don't know how good of a job. We're actually doing right now. I'm designing against having a brittle system I think I'm seeing some institutions do some interesting things. So that that's a really good sign but But to me that suggests definitely A macro sort of approach to what resilience really means where we're asking questions about how are we designing the system around people And around individuals to better support them Thank you. Thank you very much Uh in the in the chat karen costa shared a a link to a resource and I'll just Paste it again in there. Um, which is the uh academic resilience Consortium. Yes. Yep So that's a that's a new resource to me and that's really good to see. Thank you brian, can I add something I Yes, I I think it's a both and I think that That systems level resilience Colt, you know, I think of it kind of like a garden So, um, if we have healthy soil in the garden, our flowers are going to bloom We don't have you know, well If you're like me, you have really crappy soil conditions that you've never paid attention to and then you're yelling at your flowers Why aren't you blooming? Why aren't you blooming like right? So but that's pretty that's not very bright of me. So That's one of the ways that we can think about it is You know, the the macro is the garden and the soil conditions and and then, you know Life's gonna life and it's gonna do its thing Um, so let's focus instead of like yelling at the flower. Why aren't you blooming? Let's focus on Cultivating really healthy conditions for them Well, thank you. That's that's a great metaphor as as an amateur gardener. I'm I I love that I can just see people doing it. Why aren't you blooming? Yeah But let me ask a second question and then and then let me get out of the way and let and let other people take over here um There's a lot of concern in The parts of higher ed that serve traditionally age undergraduates. That is people roughly 18 to 22 years old And the concern has to do with the past four years There's a lot of concern that students have lost Social skills or rather they missed an opportunity to develop social skills due to the pandemic and perhaps other cases there's a lot of anxiety about negative impacts of overuse of social media There's also a great deal of concern about how in poll after poll as well as throughout the psychiatric literature You see younger people just having this enormously escalating mental health crisis Um, how can colleges and universities best support this upcoming generation? That seems so troubled and to need so much more help than its previous generations And you've all just answered this in a way by talking about this great metaphor of the macro and the micro of the garden But how else in particular can we support these students? Um, I'll dive in so along the lines of you know, the the condition You know if we use this metaphor of the conditions of the or quality of the soil One of my invitations to folks is To this idea, you know the ivory tower that we are insulated from the rest of society like I I think that's Been dying and dead for quite a long time I think we need to have more honest conversations with each other about Things such as gun violence racism Sexism climate change and their impact on our students mental health And and also on our students with mental illness. I actually see those as two somewhat distinct concepts How are we supporting students with mental illness? And how are we promoting mental health? And I don't know how we can you know show up in a meeting as as scholars and educators and talk about mental health And not talk about gun violence. Um, you know, we've seen Some you know horrific tragedies not, you know, obviously outside of higher education, but on campuses Too many too many to to even fathom and how how are we expecting our students and faculty and staff to teach and learn when they're terrified and You know the other challenges I mentioned and the the obvious elephant in the room brian that I know You care deeply about is is climate change and a big part of my work is talking to faculty about bringing climate change and climate action into the classroom. I think When there's a sense that the the grown-ups in the room Our students are grown-ups as well, but when there's a sense that our our leaders are ignoring This you know species threatening, you know species level threat Um, that doesn't bode for a sense of security And so much of mental health health is tied to a sense of our ability to feel safe So that is coming up for me. Um, just Constantly making sure that we're naming all these issues um and taking a more proactive stance as a You know as a collective of higher educators to say this is impacting our mission We can't teach and learn when we are terrified We can't teach and learn. I mean I'm sure our school's in la open today. I don't know Because there's these massive floods. So we're see you know constant I don't need to tell you brian, but that that's something that comes up constantly for me you remind me of colorado college which has a program for undergraduates to Live off campus and ecological housing and to do some work on climate change And the the president of colorado college tells me that students who go through this program report their mental health Improved as a result of it. And so I've been going around from campus to campus saying you all should be doing this this sounds like a no brainer, but Thank you. That's a that's a great answer Fatima Not to anticipate your answer, but I'm curious. Is there anything we can do in terms of instructional design to make the educational technology and the learning experience You know less frustrating and and less painful and to to make it cause less psychological stress Yeah, I wanted to Say that I'm looking from the Instructional design part to mental health student mental health I love uh current answers and the trauma things that she Um Explained and I really agreed with that From instructional design perspective and The students every daily life they have with this part of their education is that They have a lot of workload to manage as a student and they have the personal living so With their Workload you can add the learning system management. They are working with that and their Course structure. They are working with that from faculty perspective part and The technology platforms And I we said the content part did all make students that Um Feel upset from their mental health So from instructional design perspective, what we can add is to Manage course content and workload and help them to better and navigate When they need to start and where they need to finish and also fostering their active learning Uh in an engagement with the course content and Besides these having a user friendly environment Help them to a little bit Increase and decrease their cognitive load and help them to Mentally being health from from to support the students mental health Thank you. Thank you. I can see the dissertation wheels turning excellent Excellent step. Did you want to add anything more? Yeah, I think um ironically to kind of flip more to the micro After just talking about macro So I'm thinking a little bit about um There were some claims made about the relationship between online learning and mental health that were extremely dubious and so, um I've worked with michael barber and george velaciano's to go out and actually read the literature because you know We know the the research on online learning really well And I was like I have never seen claims about relationships or whatnot So we went out to review what we could um, and it was fascinating in many regards Including um that all but one that we could find Postated the pandemic So every study out there was situated in the context of the pandemic And yet failed to account for the pandemic as a variable Looked at this. Yeah, it was really bad. It's actually a pretty bad indictment of research If if I if I dig much further but um, there were a few In the studies that we looked at where Um, well, there's some other other features I should say of that of that body of work that were really interesting one of it was out In the studies that were better done They actually in their lit reviews Talked about a trend over time of student stress and mental health Increasingly getting worse and their site date their citations Predate the pandemic, right? So there are things that we are doing in higher education that are contributing to student stress And I think we need to talk about what are some of those things and how do we start to Counteract that so for example A common thing that that we hear from students and that gets reported in some of these studies Is that class expectations and time demands Regularly exceed their capacity to actually meet the class expectations Um, I feel like that's a really tactical tangible clear item that we could take action on Where we say, okay How how accurate is your estimate of how much time a student is spending? On class readings activities things like that Where you may think that they should be spending Be able to get everything done let's say in 10 hours a week outside of class But really the demand on a student is More like 20 hours a week and when you start to stack that up across four and five classes Um, the time demand is is is is physically too much, right? Like students feel like they can't actually do what's being asked of them We're not doing a great job of estimating time on task So I think that's something that um independent of some of these externalities Is a spot where we can start and say how how how good do we How how well are we evaluating the actual load of a class and Where and how do we need to adjust some of these time loads? For students so that their learning load is actually a manageable load A couple of other things that some of those authors refer to as well as integration of support services directly into online I think too often online is treated like a or blended to some extent too But I think online gets treated like a collection of classes or a curriculum that that delivering online learning Just means delivering online classes And yet we don't even treat on-campus education that same way on on-campus education is is um Theorized in a much more systemic way, you know education doesn't just comprise going to classes You've also got financial aid services access to counseling job support development, you know all of that So I think taking a more systemic approach of what we're thinking about around how online learning Initiatives are conceived and integration of supports for students Into that so that it's just embedded in the infrastructure access to services or support is is everybody's easy as it is to the library Um, and then there were also references to disruption of routines um, so when we do start talking about like the pandemic or um Disruption to schooling because like wildfires in Canada and people are displaced or things like that What students actually talked about as being most disruptive for them was disruption to their routines to sleep routines eating and exercise in particular And so those the researchers in those papers are really focused on how can I support my students in either Reestablishing their routines or developing some new routines to help them with their exercise or sleep or whatnot That that then contributes to their overall health and mental health that Okay, well first of all this sounds like someone who just wrote a great paper on the subject because that that is that is so much So much information and so much research on this. I I think you can you can see all kinds of support for what you just said also in the chat and I Thank you. Thank you so much Uh, also in the chat. Uh, Karen just shared a calculator from Louisiana State University about time on task Um, I I love the way you're you're giving us ways of universities and colleges to restructure How they do academic teaching but also individual faculty To rethink this as well as students to think all right. What am I what am I actually experiencing is this You know, how you know, how hard is this? Let me let me stop throwing questions out because people have great questions instead Coming up and here's one from our friend Donald Clark and don't he's in the uk But I have no idea where in the world he is because he's a great traveler So i'm just going to assume he's in the uk for now And he asks can ai chatbots help partly with the problem young people suffer in silence They don't go to parents faculty administrative teachers The ai chatbot psychologists get 3.2 many hits a day any points also to replica I would add character dot ai. So what do you what do you think? I mean can ai chatbots help with all in this? I'm gonna get myself in trouble Um, I have a a tool that was shared with me. I'm gonna put it in the chat. It's called um A lot of people I'm gonna split the room here. I'm sure but um, it's called pie. It's an it's a It's an ai it's specifically geared to um I guess I would say it's like a life coaching support Geared ai so it's tone. It's been trained to it's not, you know, it's it's a It's a warmer chat gpt It was introduced to me in a group. I'm a part of outside of how you're at a women's group And a therapist actually recommended it as a tool. I've tried it. I've used it It's actually when I'm I I tried it before a presentation I had to give and I was a bundle of nerves And I started talking to pie about my nerves and it was giving very sound advice for uh, how I might deal with those nerves. So um, there's a part of me that initially Wants to scream into the void like ai chatbot like no And um, so I'm gonna acknowledge that part of me and I you know, I'm thinking about how can we get each other into spaces with our fellow humans um, and I've had this really positive experience with this You know coaching support ai so um, yeah pie.ai So Maybe Thank you Um, that's a that's a great research. I'm sure see we're going to lose the whole discussion right now. Everyone's going to be off on No, we can't go to a We can't do that Um, so thank you. Thank you. And in the in the chat, uh, donald says, uh, here emphasizes that partly was a key part of this Um, oh, what do you think uh for tim or uh, stefanie? What do you think about using ai for this? Uh, do you know go right ahead? I'm sorry Let me add at first Add something to the question for mental health for instructional design part so, uh the study we did for a literature review to found the source of mental fatigue for students We came with some, uh, categories, uh from the literature that, um It was we could categorize them in five categories One is about the learner and the and their characteristics And the second one was about the task characteristics. Um the task. I mean the Academy task that they should do within the course and The course characteristics itself And then the environment characteristics, uh, which we divided in, um, three environment the physical one the online environment Uh, and the technology part of that And the last one it was, uh others as dr More mentioned that it was about the pandemic and the lockdown that they measured how that one, uh, contributed to a student's mental fatigue and how that one changed the routines and For a students but for the The one that I want to point is, uh, we should not forget about the physical environment that pandemic put us in a physical environment that we had to, uh, do both our same, um personal life and also learning in the environment And it increased the student's mental fatigue Um and for answering this question I should mention that as an international student in the united states, I think that's really, uh Help us and I acknowledge that It's really how other students specifically, um Helping with writing And, uh, it it decreased the time that we could put for an effort we should put for every part of Writing so it helped us to manage that part. So I I agree that it's Happened Thank you. That's a great, by the way, Fatima, we're gonna circle back to your last point about international students in just a few minutes That's really helpful. Uh, Stephanie. Did you did you want to add anything to our AI discussion about this? I think the only thing that I would add in here is that, um, and this may be a bit ironic for your podcast, Brian But I really I really hesitate to get into questions of, you know, um Um, could something do x? Well, I think that's always a much more complex question than that, right? Like, um Could we use a technology for that? Yes But I think what that means is that that's incumbent upon us To actually try to study it and understand the nuances and the implications of that like is that effective for particular Needs but not as effective for other needs. Um, what are some of the features or variables of that that make it more Effective or less effective or even detrimental and I right now we just don't have a robust enough body of research I think we'll go back to that question and really answer that meaningfully And so to my mind that's a call to the research community Um, say, you know, we need to engage in asking questions like this Um, I know I've got colleagues in psychology who have definitely been exploring that. Um, even before, you know Chat gpt and others came out like using, um, alexa or other types of devices to explore like For seniors who are at home and lonely. Does this help them? In some way or help them with particular tasks, you know, or things like that Right now, I feel like trying to answer that question is a bit nascent without having Better research that can really help us unpack some of the nuance around it Hmm. That's a really really good point. I mean, this is so new and and the technology. I mean that is so new It's developing so quickly The time if I could forgive me for dinner the time to task for producing research on this will will take time Sorry, um, I'm noticing dons that we've had these have been around a long time I think I think that's a really important point to underscore here Is that you know, we're talking about some of these technologies like they're new But I think we can also go back to a lot of the research around Like intelligent tutors and some of the other systems like that and start to learn from that Problem is most of that research has really been focused more on student learning as the holy grail Really that rather than like mental health or something like that So I I still think that there's there's a gap that needs to be filled in here But there's a richer body of work to build upon and draw upon Then I think our current cacophonous discourse might lead us to believe Well, it is it is quite a cacophony and we're we're doing our best to try and try and get some Improve the signal to noise ratio on that Yeah, yeah Thank you. Thank you three. Uh, and thank you donald for the for the great question And folks if you're new to the forum, that's an example of a q&a box question I'll give you another example right now. Uh, we have another one from the awesome ethical s&r group. This is uh, elmira janjo And her question has to do with international students Um, excuse me So what trends or insights have you observed in your research and practice regarding the mental health challenges faced by international students? So I'll begin that but I I hope Fatima picks up the baton here Um, when we review the research on mental health and online learning a vast majority of those were outside of us in uk So a lot of those were in um, you know, however international gets defined You're at the coast. So that's going to be non-us Um, so uh, a lot of those studies were outside and I will say that despite Methodological issues and a lot of other issues that we could get into and to be with over set about 75 percent of those papers um, the the under The impression that we got and actually the way that we ended up writing our article in our summary on that was that It was very clear across paper every single paper that students were struggling to navigate a period of Profound loneliness isolation and loss the sense of loss that pervaded The literature and student responses completely separate from any discussion on online learning um, it just Hung over that literature review and even our own effect of it as we were going through it Um, and so I do think that there's a widespread widespread sense of loss and And I've been doing work with the state department here doing talks with foreign embassies on online learning Mental health has increasingly been coming up as part of those conversations With folks asking questions around how what are strategies that we could use with the students who we have Who are coming to us remotely in some form that better support their mental health, you know In some of those contexts for like Lebanon where they're dealing with serious civil unrest Um, I spent a week over in Cambodia with folks talking about Supposedly about online learning, but really the shift focused more to Economic complexities there and how students are navigating that and what's the role In helping with that so my sense of the trend line that you're asking about is that this is Globally shared there may be specific contextual nuances like civil rest here War there Climate change impact there like I had a meeting with Bangladesh where they were more concerned about that But broadly I'm seeing this as a widely shared concern Well, thank you. Thank you. I was I was really afraid you were going to mention when you're talking about different nations That you're going to talk about Canada and I would have to make some kind of cruel joke about Canada deciding not to have Any more international students, but but let me let me step aside from that. That's a great answer Stephanie The team Karen. Did you want to add anything more to the international student question? I'd like to hear from Fatima first Yeah, uh As an international student came to united the state I could say that The journey I had it was um Lots of Mental health and well-being issues I had but the most part I should say that I'm not talking about the online one, but the thing being in campus Is about the culture that I should understand the culture and how to communicate and um There is a lot of there are a lot of uncertainty that you should answer or you should face to those uncertainty and Those all add to your mental health with Being a student and go through for every courses. Do you have and you should? understand In another language in another way of Instruction is different from My home country. So those are added to my mental and to my well-being and How university support I should say that Couldn't find any and actually Um source of center that I could go there and talk about my Issues, but mainly my professors faculty in department Help me to go through to for each of those Problem I had but um Yeah, it from international student every specific or any details you can see and it's normal but could be a very Mental health issue I think current can add more because it's like a trauma Being immigrants in another country Yeah, and Brian what I what I want to add to that is that faculty piece of faculty success and faculty well-being and You know one of my arguments is that teaching in higher ed is increasing increasingly relational work And I think one of the things that Stephanie and I have talked about is research on online class sizes and So that's another example of like a systems level approach To supporting faculty and student mental health. So the size of our online classes Generally just does not match up to what we know about You know works in online learning I'm here and I'm hearing students getting faculty getting like I I heard at one point during the pandemic somebody had a thousand students in their online course And there's this idea like oh, we can just keep adding more And in some ways those courses require even more Presence and even more intentional support Our faculty we love our staff and our faculty are those who are going to spend the most time with our students As Fatima is mentioning that that's who you were that's who was supporting you as an international student. So I've seen other mixed data on class sizes because if we have a smaller class size at an institution that is less diverse We're sometimes students of color are reporting that that is actually detrimental But I you know, I think the encouragement here is I it seems like the another one of these things We're not allowed to talk about in higher ed But like let's talk about class sizes and course loads and let's set faculty up so that they can actually Do this relational work break through this loss and loneliness help our students And design really effective classes And it's very difficult to do that with the you know very common class sizes and course loads thousand students in one class Friends I'm conscious of of several things right now. One is that we only have five minutes left Which which is heartbreaking because the other thing I'm conscious of is that we've just waded into some very very powerful deep water here in in the chat We've had discussion. Are we talking about isolation loss? angst and well me And it seems like what you're describing is I think the mental health crisis might might be a good term to describe this And not just for our rising students, but also for faculty and staff And you've outlined so many ways that campuses can respond And should respond The let me let me ask this as a way of of helping us grapple with all of it if you could Magically transform one institution to take this seriously You know we're going to hire Karen Costa as VP of mental health We're going to put Stephanie Moore as dean of students We're going to have Fatima leading professional development with an army at her back. Well all of this all of this And you let that play for five years What would that institution look like? You know, how would that be different from the schools that we have now? There's a lot to tackle there in three minutes I'm I'm going to it's I think it's easy to talk about the students and necessary to talk about the students, but I'm going to talk about The faculty and staff side of this First of all, I think that the way that that would look as we would have Much higher retention numbers among faculty and staff People not retiring early Or not taking as much leave Like if you want to drill down to metrics how you would know if you're building a healthier system Um, and I think that that we would have um faculty who feel like they can actually spend more time Focusing on supporting their students and and actually focusing on the teaching and learning Um of individuals and look like I said, there's more we can cover here So is a lot to unpack even in just that statement but um, I I I cannot behind the scenes is a journal editor And as a faculty member, I have seen so many people Step out of academia Um of publishing of deciding, you know what I can't do this It's too much what's being asked of me is too much The stress and the demands of it are becoming too much and so we're losing people Um, and so I think that's one of the significant ways in which an institution would change in that five year Is that it would actually retain people and those people frankly would probably be more productive So it's it's sort of inverting that relationship Like what karen was talking about, you know, we're doing things that are inadvertently making it less productive And I think you could you could flip that around Great answer great answer very concrete answer too stephanie. Thank you. Thank you Fatima karen. What would the institution look like with you at the helm? I'm going to be really succinct and say I was I'm right there with you stephanie faculty working conditions are student learning conditions And I would like to specifically make a plea for cluster hires To not only hire folks from marginalized communities, but to have a built-in support system so that we can keep them there um, there's That's a whole another conversation, but I'll I'll be quiet. I put that info in the chat That's great. That's great. By the way both stephanie and karen. You've been crazy generous in the chat This is this is a whole bit biography friends in the chat by the way before fatima gets to speak if you have Any objection to me anonymizing and posting this chat. Just let me know otherwise I think this is a rich rich record and I would really like to share Please fatima go ahead um I wanted to add from a student perspective and I could say that In five next year. We could see the environments that actually mental if friendly friendly is for students and could help them to manage their Workload and their personal life together. So right now what We do as a students is most of the time working on our Our university Workload and it's really not to really Have time to focus on personal life. So maybe in five years we can do Yeah Oh, that's that's that's a great. Thank you. That that's a really good answer I'm especially glad that you spoke from the point of view of students In in the chat daniel kampa Oh campo referred to caring institutions And I love the way that the three of you have just identified not just in the answer to my question But in this whole hour you identify pathways by which college and universities can actually be caring institutions That we are out of time and I have to wrap things up with a great deal of regret You've all been fantastic. Well, what's the best way to keep up with each of you? First of all, karen Should we just go to your main website or what's the best way? Sure? My my website's 100 faculty calm. I'm pretty active on linked in a little less active on blue sky No longer on the old twitter Okay, thank you. Thank you. And fatima, how do we keep up with you? Uh, it's my uh university email address. It's the best way to contact me Thank you. And it's in my website as well Very good. Thank you. Thank you. It's definitely how about you? How do we keep up with your all your work? Well, I'm gonna first. I'm gonna plug fatima. You can also find her at a e r a so I'm just so excited about her joining our profession and the work that she's doing Um, I'm on linkedin. I'm no longer on twitter. I love mastodon actually Um, I'm kind of geeking out in that space, but I'm also minimizing my social online presence more But probably the easiest way to tap me is via linkedin. So very good. Very good Well, thank you all for tapping into us for this past hour. Uh, it's it's really been just a Conversation. Thank you. Thank you so much. Um, and I hope each of you have a wonderful week and year ahead. Thank you again You're welcome. Thank you, Brian. Thank you everybody Bye everyone. Thank you But don't leave yet friends, uh, let me just point you to uh, where things are headed next for our forum Um, thank you all for for really good questions and uh, and a comment box a chat box that was just on fire If you want to keep talking about these issues about about angst and supporting institution Sorry supporting institutions as well as individuals. We can keep talking about this on on social media You just use the hashtag ftte Here is how you can find me on twitter on mastodon with stefanie of threads and blue sky Uh, and of course on my blog Um, if you'd like to look into our previous sessions including those about mental health Just go to our archive at tiny url.com slash fdf archive If you want to look ahead to our other topics including mental health But also college sports 100 years of educational technology the department of education and still more Just go to form the future of education dot us Thank you again for being with us for a very very powerful hour. I really really appreciate all this I hope this has helped you all. Um, I hope all of you are doing well that you're safe and sound And we'll see you next time online Bye bye