Mental Health Basics For Educators

Myself and a colleague created a module called ‘Mental Health Basics For Educators’ during COVID-19 in response to a surge in mental health concerns for students during lockdown. We had completed the Mental Health First Aid (MHFA) training and wanted to contextualise this information specifically for education-focused academics. The MHFA training was deliberately broad to cater to multiple perspectives, however, we wanted to include information specifically on how to adjust an assessment regime to alleviate the peak points in a semester where students commonly experience mental distress. My colleague and I were hoping to achieve our ongoing goal of providing a quality, supportive educational experience for our students. At the development stage of the module, there was little stress, only freedom to create a module that would support educators and lead to improved outcomes for students. The initial launch of the module saw many enthusiastic educators completing the module with well-thought-out reflections and goals to improve their courses. Many of the early completors were already well-versed in mental health. 

I think the positive responses from the initial update could have been largely associated with those passionate in the area of mental health taking on any extra professional development on the topic. So, assessment submissions were more likely to be genuinely considered and reflective. In part, the initial positivity also could have been about the flexible nature of the module. Training such as MHFA and Safe Talk only occur at specific times, and take from half a day to two days out of a working week. The module we created was set with specific guidelines and the content, activities and assessment must be able to be completed within 6 hours and needed to be asynchronous. This meant that staff that would not be able to complete training all at once, could go through the course in their own time.

Frustration occurred further down the track when we became aware that specific staff were being forced to complete the module. These participants made little effort to learn the material in the module, and as a result, produced assessment tasks that indicated they had no knowledge of the topic. Currently, the module is not mandatory. One module per year is mandatory for education-focused academic staff, however, there are about twenty different modules to choose from, all of various educational topics. The biggest issue we have found with the module is that specific departments and specific managers are forcing their staff to complete our module as they have deemed it ‘necessary’. We believe they may see mental health as a tick-box activity, and aren’t conveying the true importance of the module to their staff. 

Partially what could have contributed to these conditions is that the module sits within an imposed course design. Unfortunately, that course design is content-based with a deliberate lack of educator interaction. My preferred method of teaching is synchronous learning which focuses on collaborative and evaluative activities, just like the workshops that I run. Advocating for systemic change is part and parcel of my position, but in this case given the hierarchy that exists within all higher education institutions, and the hierarchical difference between myself and those that dictate the standards for the modules.

What I’ve learned from this experience, is that assigning a well-aligned assessment task to professional development is actually a valuable way of both giving specific feedback to learners and also controlling completion for those that are not adequately engaged in the learning. The workshops I run have no assessments attached, but in themselves are hands-on, focused on feedback, and result in staff uptake of further support. The assessment has been useful in the module as a gatekeeper for completion. We don’t ‘fail’ staff as such, we simply revert the submission to draft and point to specific areas that they need to work on. This tends to help staff realise the quality of submission that is acceptable, and weeds out those that think they can ‘tick the box’, as they usually don’t resubmit. It would be possible to replicate this model of learning in the faculty but would need to be designed so that whatever assessment is required of the participant doesn’t add further stress on the already stretched workload. For example, an assessment that requires staff to evaluate and improve their learning outcomes would not be adding to the workload of anyone who is already considering amending their unit.