Dear colleagues,

You are invited to this Learning & Teaching ENssentials webinar on Embedding mental health practice in Learning & Teaching. In this webinar, we will hear about some ways mental health practice is used to support students in the School of Arts & Creative Industries (Seb Chaloner, Graphic Design), School of Health & Social Care (Jane Sime, Adult Nursing) and the Wellbeing & Inclusion team (Dr Amy Beddows, Student Counsellor & Trauma Therapist). This takes place on Monday 18^th November, 12:30-13:30 GMT, via MS Teams. You’ll find out about what these colleagues are doing in their areas, the challenges and successes they have faced, as well as concerns along the way including imposter syndrome, which is addressed in the Wellbeing & Inclusion team’s workshops on this which are open to students and staff. Oh look, there’s some recordings of those wellbeing workshops here.

As mentioned in the recently published Student Support Quick Guides, Personal Development Tutors and other members of academic staff are not expected to take on roles that should rightly be delivered by specialists such as counsellors or the Safeguarding team. If, at any point, you feel you need to seek advice and support from specialist services, please contact Counselling & Mental Wellbeing at counselling@napier.ac.uk.

However, we know that our experiences in education can impact on mental health, positively and negatively, and vice versa (Stones & Glazzard, 2019). Many factors impacting on mental health will be out of our control or influence, such as issues to do with housing, personal life, and work/finances. However, the way we structure, share and support Learning, Teaching & Assessment can help to mitigate further stresses, potentially have some positive immediate impact, give students tools/methods which will help them as they progress through their study and careers and provide some comfort that they are taking positive steps in their lives.

This includes working in integrated ways with teams across the university, such as Student Futures, who can help students to improve career readiness and feel more informed through their studies as they look to life after their course. We want students to thrive at ENU and beyond, and we’ve been working on a project by that very name: Thrive at ENU and Beyond. he purpose of this is to enable staff to promote and support students’ engagement with their own development through timely signposting, guided conversations and flexible, curriculum-integrated activities..

Have a look at the resources from Thrive, and we hope to see you at this webinar.

If you need any support to help you to participate, please contact DLTE@napier.ac.uk

DLTE,

Department of Learning & Teaching Enhancement