Students’ experience of wellbeing and distress is interconnected with their learning and motivation. However, addressing wellbeing within curriculum can seem challenging in an online (or constantly changing) environment, or when we feel we don’t have time ourselves to explore the options, or we feel that we lack the expertise. In this session, Lydia Woodyatt explored what we can do with five meaningful minutes online to support wellbeing based on the psychological needs of students. Lydia explored how small five-minute changes in teaching practice can sometimes make big impacts on student learning, wellbeing, and motivation.

1. 5 meaningful minutes: Small changes to
teaching to support student wellbeing and
motivation online in 2020
May 2020
Associate Prof. Lydia Woodyatt
College of Education, Psychology and Social Work
Flinders University
Twitter: @LydiaWoodyatt

2. Small changes to teaching
• https://www.chronicle.com/article/Small-Changes-in-Teaching-
The/235583

3. 5 meaningful minutes approach
• What makes something meaningful?
• Meaning, wellbeing and motivation – all under pinned by
psychological needs.
• By the end of this session: What changes can I make in my practice
that will take 5 minutes (of my time or my students time) but make a
meaningful difference?

4. Models of Psychological Wellbeing
• Deci & Ryan’s Self Determination Theory
http://selfdeterminationtheory.org/ (and a sub part of this - Basic
Psychological Needs theory)
• Seligman’s five (PERMA; Positive Emotion, Engagement, Relationships,
Meaning, Achievement see also PERMA plus).
• Abele’s Big Two (Agency and Communion)
• Ryff’s Six (Self-acceptance; Personal growth; Purpose in life;
Environmental mastery; Autonomy, Positive relations with others)
• Social Identity Theory as applied to health and wellbeing and Need
for Belonging (Mark Leary)

6. What threats to psychological needs can be present as a consequence
of COVID – 19?
• Agency (what about my security [financial, housing, health], sense of being
out of control, self-efficacy)
• Purpose (will I be able to achieve what I want, will there be jobs, can I make a
difference, with all these global bad things happening do I matter).
• Growth (frustrated despite trying, stuck, taking a step back)
• Belonging (lack of emerging discipline/professional relationships; lack of
scaffolding of what is normative for the emerging identity, inability to
participate – interpreting this as signal of not belonging)

7. Example 5 meaningful minutes activities

8. Agency/Autonomy

9. Simple to do lists
• This week’s tasks
• Next 3 steps

10. What me worry??!
• https://www.cci.health.wa.gov.au/~/media/CCI/Consumer%20Modul
es/What%20Me%20Worry/What%20Me%20Worry%20-%2007%20-
%20Problem-Solving.pdf

11. Managing Stress
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=2&v=NRRwB-
68vEc&feature=emb_logo
• What are the different ways you experience stress?
• Stories of stress and stress management from others?
• Pair with Problem solving

12. Belonging/Social Identification/Connection

13. Changing Social Identities Activity
• Past identities [as resources]
• Curiosity identities – emerging or exploring identities that you would
like to identify as areas of growth and feedback

14. Anonymous Squirrel
• Google doc Q and A

15. What does a “Graduate” look like?
• Diverse prototypes of student/professional life talking about success
for them and their process of getting there. Using case studies or
Vlogs [for example https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0IYODujwE8c&feature=emb_logo ]
• Was their anyone there you identified with?
• Review Topic Learning Outcomes in light of stories (what aspects of
our learning outcomes might be relevant to this person’s
experience?).
• What is your own professional growth or development goal for this
topic? Rate yourself now……(come back and have them rate
themselves again later).

16. Growth/Mastery

17. Good Self-Coaching
• Can you think of a time you have experience a bad coach? What did
they do and how did it effect the team/players?
• Overly critical coach?
• overly adoring (non critical) coach?
• Self-rate (from overly critical to overly adoring) – how are you going at
coaching yourself?

18. What characteristics lead to success?
• List of self-management abilities
• Self-management of personal development poll (what do I already
have, what do I need to develop in).

19. Managing Uncertainty: The Learning Pit
• https://vimeo.com/117364809

20. How to receive feedback: Austin's Butterfly
• https://vimeo.com/38247060
• Pair with draft and response to ‘reviewer’ process.

21. Meaning or Purpose

22. What is success for you?

23. Meta-teaching
• E.g. Blooms taxonomy of critical thinking as a reflection tool around
assessment

24. First/Last 5 minutes of class – reflection on
learning
• 5 minute essay on “Where does this apply to the world?”

25. Link feedback to potential purpose
• Think of feedback as an extension in their professional mentoring
• Even when giving feedback on written assignments suggest how they
could use this knowledge (especially second and third year students),
or things that they may try or look into to go further with it.
• Value their work: Ask to use their work (with credit or anonymity as is
appropriate) in a way that allows them to put it on their CV. Teach
them how to do this.

26. Values based action
• Identify a source of stress
• List top 10 values
• Think- what would it mean to face my stressor according to my values
• Choose 1 to apply this week.

27. Small changes to course design
• What equity issues create barriers to psychological needs within out
courses (explicit or implicit)? How can we remove these or provide
alternate pathways to offset that threat?
• Where are these in my course design, assessment, interactions with
students?
• What small changes could I make to address these issues?

28. Small changes for student led reflection:
How could I build in a 5 minute tasks to helps students to…..
• Plan activities, interactions, tasks and learning in ways that link
learning to core psychological needs
• Provide opportunities for reflection
• Provide opportunities for planning
• Provide opportunities for monitoring
• Provide opportunities for evaluating and feedback
• Normalise (and model) what happens when these needs get
frustrated and how we can respond
• Re-orientate toward the needs after setbacks

29. Agency Purpose Mastery Belonging
Scaffold problem Solving
https://www.cci.health.wa.gov.au/~/media/CC
I/Consumer%20Modules/What%20Me%20Wo
rry/What%20Me%20Worry%20-%2007%20-
%20Problem-Solving.pdf
Where does this apply to
the world (5 minute
essay)
Participation as reflection
on learning outcomes
Multiple, diverse
prototypes

30. Resources
• The Rubber Brain http://www.thefridge.org.au/therubberbrain
• Special issue of Student Success on psychological wellbeing and distress in
Higher Education https://search.proquest.com/docview/2331549268?pq-
origsite=gscholar
• https://www.cci.health.wa.gov.au/Resources/Looking-After-Yourself
• http://unistudentwellbeing.edu.au/
• https://wellbeing.ubc.ca/ubc-wellbeing-tools-and-resources
• http://selfdeterminationtheory.org/
• https://www.chronicle.com/article/How-Much-Do-You-Want-
Your/242802?cid=cp44