Internal webinar to support new academic writers Debbie Holley shares her and David Biggins work on learning design and student 'technostress' which challenges our assumptions about the online spaces students choose to learn - especially in regard to Virtual Learning Environments. What do they prefer and how can we help them? This talk will offers insights into accessing and interpreting data in ways that are more useful for academics, learning developers, and learning designers, and suggests ways in which we can effectively frame student support by putting the ‘real’ student experience at the centre of our practice. Original citation Biggins, D and Holley, D. (2023). Designing for student wellbeing: Challenging assumptions about where our students learn. Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education. https://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/938

1. 'Technostress' and
the student
experience.
Professor DebbieHolley (FHSS)
Dr David Biggins (BuBS)
With the steps to publication embedded!

2. What does the
research say?
• The National Union of Students (2020) conducted a
survey during the COVID-19 pandemic which found that
20% of students struggled with access to online learning,
with black, Asian and minority ethnic students, those
from poorer backgrounds, care leavers, students
with caring responsibilities and students with disabilities
particularly impacted. 82% of students seek support from
friends and family online, however only 18% are looking
for self-help for wellbeing through digital apps
• Work by Lui (2021) identifies intersectionality as
significant with BAME females with lower social status
having the lowest computer/smart phone ownership
• 104,000 students had no access at all during the
pandemic (OfS Digital Poverty Report)
• AdvanceHE/HEPI survey (2022): Epidemic here where 4 in
10 students are self-reporting high anxiety, with trans,
LGB+, nonbinary, black and international students all
significantly above the average, and that showing up as
an important factor in non-continuation risk.
Literature

3. Learning online: what are your experiences?
Then we will find out what students think....and
do!
Q1 On scale on 1-10 what was your experience of the last session
you taughtonline?
1------------------------------------------------------------10
All cameras off,not sureif anyone was even there fabulous,engaged & motivated students
Q2 How confident are you trying out a new technology?
1------------------------------------------------------------10
Really? Do I have to? love it! Read the notes go to the workshop, look at youtube videos,can't waitto try

4. Our study: set out to explore student decisions about how they best support their learning, and the implications of
their choices for a) their digital wellbeing and b) for institutional understanding of this (n=167)
Demographics of our sample

5. Interim study
findings: note student
(lack of) confidence
with the VLE

6. Confidence in social media vs the VLE

7. Confidence in the VLE by UG year

8. Despite students accessing the VLE regularly, there
is wide variation on how easily some components
can be accessed
course calendar

9. What students
want/suggest for
the VLE
• Consistency.More consistentlayout across differentcourses.Standardised structures eg by
week
• Ease of access to VLE content
• Proof of learning.Access to content onlyifa quiz has been completed successfully.But ..
Others request earlyaccess to all content for assignment preparation
• Clearer communication.‘Less spammingof irrelevant material’
• Material.Recorded lectures and seminars.Everythingonline. Accessible byall.‘Dyslexic
friendly’materials.No chargeable resources.Detailed notes within PowerPoints.Past
assignments

10. What students
think staff
need to do
• Expectations. Set clear expectations at the startof the course
• Quality. ‘take action againstpoorly designed assignments and bad demonstrators and lecturers’
• Skills. More confidentin using technology
• Supportand understanding. Need to be better at supporting and communicating with students. ‘Regular 1-
to-1 support’. ‘Check in on each person, their well-being and work load’. ‘Understand thatnot all of us work
at the same rate/retain information at the same time’, ‘Be awarethat somestudents have familial or other
responsibilities away fromthe courseand this makes it morechallenging’. Supportfor group-based activities
• Build relationships. ‘so many [staff]seemso unapproachable- focus on lecture job not justbe there for the
pay check’. ‘I would find it helpful if lecturers took the time to get to know students’
• Student contribution. Staff do not take into accountthe valuable knowledgethat students can offer
• Recognition. Morerecognition of good student performanceandResponsiveness - Respond quickly to
student requests

11. Student digital health and wellbeing
Our students reported that
they felt unsupported:
a. with their wellbeing (go
online 'over there to be fixed'
b. their digital skills gap (go
online to LinkedIn Learning etc
and find out (FOFO!)
c. With their confidence (going
back on campus)
Interim finding, confidence
and blog post

12. Key findings
“Be more mindful about the situation, be more kind”. Advice
to academic staff from an undergraduate student.
In our study, the desire of students to succeed is strongly felt
but the environment created for them fails to meet their
needs for a high quality and consistent experience.
Participating student comments indicate they feel let down
by teaching staff who struggle with the mediating tools of
their online trade, technology, and show littleempathy for
those they teach.
They then head 'off-grid' and use tools that they find useful
for communication outside formal channels WhatsApp,
Trello, Slack, and vanish from our learner analytics

13. Conceptual map
Figure1 comprises four components.
• The students and their wellbeing are located in the top left
quadrant.
• To their right are their peers who are connected to them either face-
to-faceor online.
• The inter-student learning that takes place here is not visible to
institutions and is thus termed the ‘hidden learning’ spaces.
• The institutional space, made up of staff and the VLE, is represented
at the bottom of the map. Learning analytics are closely connected to
the institutional learning environmentand draws insights fromit.
• The fourth component, in the middle of the map, is internet-
mediated communications. This demonstrates thatmany interactions
between institutions and students are reliant on this medium of
communication, and it thereforebecomes a vital element in the system,
taken for granted when it operates as expected but a sourceof
frustration and stress when it does not.
Concept
diagrams/mappingmove
work from 1* to 2*

14. Levels of stress appeared to be built into our design!

15. What do staff want?
a) Technical training for students (7)
b) Better infrastructure (wifi, PC, devices) (6)
c) Inter-personal skill development for staff(4)
d) Technical skills training for staff(1)
e) Work-load planning re-prioritisation (3)
f) More support from university leadership teams
(2)
g) Better learning technology (VLE tools) (5)

16. Steps to success:
• Literature, Ethics,write to a
journal template
• Create interim outputs– we shared our first
set of small-scale findings at a national
conference and wrote a national blogpost
• Share the final data set
on BORDaR our online repositoryfordata
sets – manyfunders are nowasking for this
• We shared our interim
findings on Slideshare – and I put
all of presentations and white papers –
makes it easyto tweet/share and build your
reputation forexpertise in an area
• And upload to BRIAN asap! Or it may not
count as a REF paper....

17. References and further
reading
Biggins, D. and Holley, D., 2023. Designing for student wellbeing: challenging assumptions
aboutwhere our students learn.Jour
https://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/938nal ofLearning Developmentin
Higher Education,27(April).https://doi.org/10.47408/jldhe.vi27.938
Holley, D andBiggins, D. (25.11.2021) #Take5 #65 Wellbeing:The chasm betweenstudents’ expectations and
institutional provision
https://lmutake5.wordpress.com/2021/11/25/take5-65-wellbeing-the-chasm-between-students-
expectations-and-institutional-provision/
• Dorling, D., 2020. Slowdown: the endof the great acceleration—andwhyit’s goodfor the planet, the
economy, andour lives. Yale UniversityPress.
• Holley, D. andBiggins, D., 2020. Institutional compassion:a co-designapproach to developingdigital
wellbeing. In: Association ofLearning TechnologyOnline Summer Summit 26-27 August 2020 Online.
• Gilbert (2020) Assess compassioninthe curriculum– whywouldwe do
that? https://www.herts.ac.uk/link/volume-2,-issue-1/assess-compassion-in-higher-education-how-and-
why-would-we-do-that
• Maguire, D., Dale, L. andPauli, P. (2020). Learning andteaching reimagined: a new dawnfor higher
education?JISC: Bristol
• McDougall, J. and Potter, J., 2019. Digital medialearning in the third space. Media Practice and
Education, 20(1), pp.1-11.
• OfS Insights Briefing No 5 (2020) Are all students being properlysupported?
• Raimondi, T.P. (2019) CompassionFatigue inHigher Education: Lessons From Other Helping Fields,
Change: The Magazine of Higher Learning, 51 (3), 52-58, DOI:10.1080/00091383.2019.1606609
• Roper, L., andClarke, S (2020) UbuntuChapter 10 in Devis-Rozental andS Clarke (eds.), Humanising
Education pp167-180 Palgrave-macmillan
• Wiederhold, B.K., 2020. Connecting throughtechnologyduring the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic:
Avoiding “ZoomFatigue”,https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/pdfplus/10.1089/cyber.2020.29188.bkw