 and welcome everybody. It's great to see so many of you joining us. My name is Matt Lingard and I'm chairing today's session and there's the name of the session on the screen and you can see the speakers so hopefully you're in the right place. It's great to see so many people joining and also a shout out to those of you watching at some distant point in the future. I hope you enjoyed too. I'm not going to waste any more time I'm just going to hand straight over to our two speakers Kelly and Louise to get us underway and just a reminder on the questions. If you post them in the chat, join the talk at any point. I'll be keeping an eye out for them and then we'll pass them on towards the end of the presentation. So there's 20 minutes to present and five minutes to question. So over to you Louise. Brilliant. Now let actually Kelly introduce the title of the research because it is her research. Hello. Hi everyone. My name is Kelly Hester. I'm a master's research student at IT Sligo and the title of my research is Online Supports for Flexible Learners to Support Student Mental Health and Wellbeing at Scale. Now firstly I'm Louise Carins and I'm going to take you through a bit of the background of the project. So I'm the IT Sligo project manager on the INO project and INO stands for Innovation Opportunities Transforming Education. So the Higher Education Authority in Ireland awarded 2.8 million to support this project and we were charged with building digital capability for flexible learning delivery in the west to the northwest of Ireland. INOT is a multi-institutional higher education partnership project and it's comprised of the Institute of Technology Sligo, Lechler Kenny Institute of Technology and Galwin Mayo Institute of Technology. The three higher education institutes are located as you can see from the west to northwest of Ireland. As a group the three HEIs are the Connacht Ulster Alliance. Currently we're working towards the creation of a technological university in the west to northwest of Ireland and hopefully this will be achieved by January 22. At that stage then we will have eight campuses over 20,000 students even and 600 programs. There's five work packages on this project and IT Sligo is leading work package three so we're focusing on building a range of student services for flexible learning. As you have seen previously our campuses cover a wide area and sometimes our students live in remote areas. Furthermore many of our students study online courses and we have international students working in different time zones studying at different times so we look to focusing on creating and refining tools from an inclusive viewpoint. Tools that will support our students and then they would be available to our online students and then they'll be available also to our campus students. We built an interactive framework to support the student journey and this framework split into three stages. Before they arrive, while they're studying and when they move on. Each stage has key themes in it and students can find their support for the team by clicking on the interactive framework for quick access. So the framework will help students to identify and find their supports quickly themselves 24 seven all year round and outside office hours. So this research that Kelly is going to introduce fits into the well-being section in stage two of while you study. Over you to Kelly. Okay to begin with I thought it would be helpful to provide some definition around mental health and well-being. Mental health is defined as being able to cope with the normal pressures and disappointments that life brings having a sense of worth and fulfilment while being affiliated to and contributing to society earth community. Well-being the definition of well-being as defined by Darjeet Al 2012 is built upon a strand that well-being is a balancing act or a flow between each human encounter and overcome so yeah within each human to encounter and overcome difficulties so just like a seesaw it's a balancing point between students psychological social and physical resources and their psychological social social and physical challenges that they face in higher education meaning that if the students have more challenges than reserves the seesaw dips along with their well-being and vice versa mental health as defined by Barden and Caleb 2019 and Thompson 2019 so symptoms of mental health can occur at any time for a student it can range from depression anxiety panic tax trouble sleeping and so on so transition stress burnout money worries loneliness disappointments can lead to symptoms of mental health distresses even the mildest symptom can impact a student's university experience and can influence successful study mental illness and ill health so these are conditions beyond the normal up and down of everyday life and these are influenced by such things as genetic cognitive emotional socioeconomic and spiritual factors reports show that college students are struggling with mental health and well-being impacting their college experience ability sense of self and academic success the national student mental health survey one of the biggest of its kind and conducted in 2018 and 19 provides an overview and highlights concerns around the mental health and well-being of 3300 students in higher education it reported that 32.2% of students were diagnosed with mental health distresses over their lifespan 74% with depression anxiety 34% with eating disorders and 7.2 with obsessive compulsive disorders 20% of students reported that they felt like they'd known to talk to regarding their distresses and students relying on loans 52% were highly anxious 36.5% highly depressed and 25.5% highly stressed an underlying theme was that the students sense and feelings of helplessness in asking for and receiving the supports they need students felt there was a shortage of support available when they were trying to seek help so more recently the Lister seal and dutch from the open university presented comprehensive statistics from a survey of 584 students regarding enablers and barriers to well-being in distant learning the report shows that 33.3 33.3 35% found isolation negatively impacted their mental health 60.1% of students struggled with difficult life circumstances during the studies and 40.6 reporting those with mental health conditions also struggled with their communication skills and 71.9% of students reporting a mental health condition found assessments were a problem for their mental well-being but also providing a more balanced view they they found how higher education in distant learning actually promoted well-being and we see that 58.2% of students said that studying assisted with their sense of confidence and identity 62.1% of students communicates that their curriculum actually proved positive for their well-being 63.7% stated that building study skills benefited their mental health and well-being and 58.4% of students revealed that distant learning environment proved good for their mental health so why statistics show that higher education students are struggling there still remains many barriers for students seeking help so these include embarrassment and the stigma discrimination and exclusion that can often arise as a result of disclosing mental distresses students can perceive that stress and anxiety is actually part and parcel of college life many do not have the mental literacy to identify their need for psychological assistance and then and then there's the inconvenience time schedule costs and schedule issues and costs as a result there are now greater efforts regarding supports and interventions to assist and improve with mental health and well-being among higher education students so with evidence that early intervention reduces psychological distresses and to support student mental health and well-being via the INO project IT Sligo are implementing two digital online mental health and well-being intervention programs the first is epigemes being well living well and the second is silver clouds well-being in education so digital mental health and well-being interventions so these are distributed on modes such as internet web pages on mobile device applications and they provide an accessible and convenient way for higher education students to seek and avail of mental health support intervention occurs as students through their mobile page access practical well-being tips support tools and online counseling by engaging with the applications and this is to suit their timetable to meet their individual needs so in contrast to students struggling along the two platforms epigemes being well living well and silver clouds health offer a supportive environment to students the first digital intervention is being well living well and this is a new online toolkit produced in partnership with mental health authorities higher education students and staff and it's used a preventative method to assist students along the way in their college journey in sustaining physical well-being it addresses mental health and well-being topics unique to both undergraduate and postgraduate students in higher education so with interactive and animated scenarios it also directs students where to seek further help if needed so the toolkit is presented within four strands with 17 micro courses first is living well so this supports students and finding a sense of balance between their academic study life and healthy living feeling well and this explores and addresses emotional and mental challenges that students might face staying safe provides a space to become more informed on issues around online safety this includes healthy relationships sexual health and consent and spending well this provides advice and presents cases around the topic of finances including managing the cost of living and college fund funding college so the second is the second support is silver cloud health well-being in education this is an established confidential internet based digital mental health system that delivers online parapetic and psycho education programs it's established in conjunction with the school of psychology at trinity college the university of dublin this provides eight weeks of internet delivered cbt treatment for common health issues such as depression anxiety and stress it addresses students thoughts emotions and behaviors and the program consists of interactive and animated scenarios and a key is that the students will independently use the tools after each session and then continue to use them in the future so there are 17 silver cloud courses intended to help students improve and maintain their well-being by addressing underlying issues that can have a negative impact on their college experience and few of these include space from depression space from anxiety space from stress space from money worries space for public positive image and so on so the overall aims and objectives of this research is firstly to determine if and how students mental health and well-being has improved as a direct result of using being well-living well and server cloud number two is to examine if and how students believe there was an improvement in their college life and academic success three is determine if the availability of this encouraged help seeking behaviors within the students and fourthly is to compare the experience of students who are learning online emerging emergency remote blended and on campus so the current researchers assessing three cohorts of students online students who will have access to psychological supports that are equivalent to those previously only accessible to on-campus students and secondly on-campus students now remove the learners and then third hopefully students who return to campus once COVID-19 restrictions have lifted comparing online with traditional on-campus students and this research will conduct a comparison of the experiences of accessing and availing of the two online support programs comparing students who were remote on-campus learners compared to students who are online learners so this research will apply two theories the first is the biopsychosocial model by Engel 1977 to 1997 so it posits that an individual's well-being and thus behaviors are influenced by the interconnection of biological social and emotional risk factors so biological risk factors include genetic medical brain functioning so physical illnesses would include fatigue headaches trouble sleeping and so on this psychological factors include cognitive emotional and behavioral features while social factors include environmental cultural family characteristics unique to each student so for example research found there's um linked emotional dynamics such as loneliness a lack of confidence to causing physical distress and impacting a student's mental health so a second theory is the self-determination theory by Deckey and Ryan 2000 to 2017 so this theory advocates that by having three innate psychological components meshed within biological social and cultural environments so this produces proactive and engaged behavior the three innate psychological components are competence which is feeling capable and and competent autonomy being self-sufficient and self-ruled and relatedness having a sense of belonging and connection if the three psychological components are not fulfilled it is said the student's motivation can be stifled and the student becomes passive and alienated but this research raises questions such as how does this theory fit in with higher education students availing of digital psychological interventions for example if and how does higher education environment produce proactive and engaged or passive and alienated behavior in students who are engaging with being well living well and silver cloud here is the two-year plan of data collection and analysis the current research will study will be conducted using a mixed method approach so conducting quantitative research through online survey surveys and qualitative by form of individual semi-structured interviews so for example the methodology for quantitative as being well and living well offer different features and will be used by different individuals for surveys were created students do the first baseline survey so before they start being well living well or silver cloud program so questions are on demographics and scales measuring students psychological and general well-being then having completed a program students are presented with the second online survey that has an additional scale measuring participants satisfaction with being well living well and silver cloud and just in conclusion it is hoped that this research will inform an evidence-based approach to the adoption of digital mental health interventions for online students while increasing help seeking behaviors within the student population thanks very much thank you thank you thank you so much Kelly and Louise for coming and sharing that with us it's obviously such a huge issue for for the sector as I think many of us are recognizing and it's I think it's it's so important that you're taking you know research forward and evaluating the responses that you're trying to help the students through in the way you the ways you're trying to help the students through this I've got no questions in the chat yet but there's still time for people to post them in I wondered if I could just go back a little bit before the research I was really interested in the two resources you shared from Epigeme and from the name of the online cell this is okay yeah yeah and just your own evaluation of those resources I was quite interested in you know and yeah just around those resources themselves oh yeah thank you myself is it yes yeah so I'm just interested obviously you haven't evaluated these with the students yet and nowhere yeah we're in the process of doing that yeah yeah yeah so I was interested in your own kind of thoughts on the actual resources themselves yeah I think I think they're extremely and they're so beneficial and I would have loved that even as when I was an undergrad student just to have those resources and just as it said as well so many students don't realize that there might be some issues there and by going into being well being well living well and server cloud you start to recognize maybe different issues that are there and what's really good as well is that this is a place where professionals have come together and provide a safe platform to provide information to students across all the topics and so yeah great thank you thank you from I suppose a management point of view when you're thinking of which one you might use or will you use both we kind of see being one living well fitting into an information part before they get into trouble I suppose essentially our silver cloud tends to be when the student is in trouble you know and there might be dealing with the counselor or maybe they should be you know that that type of an area so they compliment each other they just have different kind of purposes and from from that point of view as well so it depends on I suppose what you're trying to do whether you want to catch the intervention before it happens so you're in information type of session or do you know when the student is in trouble itself yeah yeah I'm as well I'm definitely going to be checking them out we have got some questions I'd like to put forward there's one from Peter beer on the on the screen now I'll let you read that one and one of you could respond that would be great yeah how might we reduce the stigma of mental health issues so students are willing to disclose and discuss yeah what this is coming through in my research actually that you know students it's a competitive environment and they're strive for perfectionism and for students just to maybe it be more open the college is more open or the university is more open that failure happens disappointments happen life doesn't all isn't always plain sailing and just mean having more open conversation around that and I do know as well that some universities are actually bringing it into the curriculum so that the discussions can come up within in the lecture hall about maybe different things and they see that they're not alone in this and then stepping forward might be that bit easier but having platforms like this is definitely you know helpful so yeah and a whole kind of college perspective too we're trying to promote well being and bring these tools into it and but we're also trying to link up with student services and we have a graphics facilitator amongst our team who's planning to you know kind of visualize this each month so it different things within the tools that we might highlight at different stages so when they're going to exams that we might look at you know they're thinking about managing stress that type of thing so I suppose just taking well being from a college perspective from all the different services and not just concentrating on these particular tools so people just understand well being important for us all whether we're staff or students yeah I think that's so important Louise those things often don't happen in that way and the connections between departments and the kind of holistic approach to this we've had just a comment from I don't know before I move to Peter's second question just just flagging how interested people will be in terms of seeing seeing the results of this and hopefully we'll be seeing you next year and I'll just switch Peter put another question up which is on the screen now is there any value in teachers being candid about their own issues and experiences um I don't know if I can I can say outright if there is or isn't but I do know that um having a college campus maybe well being and lots of information coming through um will definitely support students and make them maybe think okay life things don't happen or I didn't get the grades um I know personally I was I remember one of my lecturers telling me that they hadn't got initially hadn't got the grade they wanted and the relief I got from that um it really just boosted you know my morale to keep going and going okay if there if that happened to them you know I can get over this as well so I did find that helpful and a personal notice great thanks for sharing that Kelly um I think I think that was the last question um in the comments so I just want to say thank you um to the both of you for taking the time obviously to present today um and as everybody's saying it's such an important work and we will look forward to seeing the outcome but for today thank you for the all the work you've put in in preparing we appreciate that and know how much work um that is and thank you for everybody who came along to watch the session live today and those who are watching it at some point in the future um thanks everybody thank you