It’s difficult to overstate the challenge and transformation brought by the COVID-19 pandemic, especially with the shifts to online and now hybrid or socially-distanced education. For our students, this disruption to their expectations has taken a real psychological toll, resulting in unusually high rates of mental health issues including anxiety, depression, or both; but when it comes to the relationship between stress and academic performance, the trouble often seems to arise not so much from a lack of effort as a lack of effective self-management strategies. Although our explicit objectives target skills involving rational thinking processes, the emotional aspects of the human psyche serve as a crucial foundation for the successful achievement of these aims, and the truth is that stress, when properly managed, can actually serve constructive purposes for personal growth and learning. To promote student wellbeing as a proxy for supporting successful academic development, it is therefore useful to consider how we might support the development of emotional regulation strategies among our students. In this webinar, we will explore the power of cognitive reappraisal as one such approach within the context of formative feedback as well as other ideas for promoting psychological wellbeing among our students.
