Designing Student and Staff Wellbeing Feedback Loops
1. My Wellness Check
Designing a Student and Staff Wellbeing Feedback Loop to
Inform University Policy Governance
Derek Lomas & Willem van der Maden, Human-centered Design, TU Delft, The Netherlands
Paper presentation for RSD 10 - Nov. 4, 2021
2. Many complex systems use measurement and
data to support improved outcomes
Introduction
3. Educational systems should explicitly support
wellbeing because it enhances the quality of
education
and it is the morally right thing to do
Introduction
5. During the COVID-19 pandemic, wellbeing in
Europe fell to its lowest level in 40 years
Urgency
6. McKinsey & Co estimate the loss of wellbeing
cost more than three times as much as the
economic losses
Urgency
7. 1. Wellbeing is a critical input to education
“Hard to Learn Well When You Don’t Feel
Well”
2. Wellbeing is a critical objective for education
Education that enhances student wellbeing is
intrinsically higher quality
Vision for Wellbeing in Education
9. Creating change in Universities is difficult due
to their size, complexity, diffuse management
structure and their tendency for consensus-
based decision making
DesignX
12. Focus: the design of wellbeing feedback
loops “on the go”
Human-centered Design
13. What do we measure?
“eat your own dogfood”
Human-centered Design
14. “Off the shelf” metrics?
goal: measure wellbeing to inform institutional
action
Human-centered Design
15. The impact of COVID-19 on daily life: an
omnipresent experience
Human-centered Design
16. Talk to staff and students about their
experience to develop the instrument
Human-centered Design
17. Students were stuck in small rooms that are
not designed for studying all day, every day
many staff members were stuck with their
children
Personal Experience
23. Questionnaire Experience
MWC WEMWBS* CSSWQ**
Correlation with Life Satisfaction expressed by R2 0.53 0.51 0.42
How satisfied were you with this questionnaire? (0-10) 7.0 6.2 5.9
This questionnaire was of high quality (0-5) 3.8 3.3 3.1
Completing this questionnaire was of some value to me (0-5) 3.3 2.9 2.6
Completing this questionnaire was engaging for me (0-5) 3.2 2.8 2.7
Completing this questionnaire was exhausting (0-5) 2.0 1.8 1.9
Completing this questionnaire was worthwhile (0-5) 3.5 3.2 3.0
Completing this questionnaire was fun (0-5) 2.9 2.7 2.6
* WEMWBS: Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Well-being Scale; **CSSWQ: College Student Subjective Wellbeing Questionnaire
24. Our goal was to design wellbeing feedback
loops to inform institutional action
what were action that have been taken?
Summary
25. Impact at different scales, for example:
- Program for improving home working spaces
- A “human touch” in student communication
Summary