Regulation of learning: Quick activities that prompt students to develop a coping strategy or learning strategy; incorporate Willingham’s (2023) book, Outsmart Your Brain, and engage students in periodic discussions of insights from the book and application to their learning (Stephanie has used this in her online classes with very positive feedback from students).

Regulation of learning environment: Instructors share how to manage your own online work / teaching environment, and ask students to share strategies for how they set up their online learning environments at home.

Use quizzes to create periodic, ungraded self-assessments that prompt learners to indicate how they are managing their time or how well their degree of participation is taking shape in the class. Options can be structured to prompt ideas, and an open text question can be used to prompt students to generate ideas around, for example, one thing they will aim to manage better in the next two weeks.

Create a sidebar for students on “Caring for Yourself While Learning Online” that briefly summarizes the importance of creating routines and values students having a social and personal life.

Do weekly required readings, assignments, and class participation equal accreditation expectations, or do they exceed those? If you value student mental health, identify a few things you can do to truly support your students’ ability to create routines and maintain social and personal connections.

Where possible, simplify course structures and provide clear, detailed instructions to reduce cognitive load (Inan et al., in press). Moore and Barbour (2023) dedicate an entire chapter to organization of online courses, noting that organization and communication are essential in online learning. In a recent study, Fischer and colleagues (2022) found that strong course organization was associated with increased letter grades, and that the effect for clear organization was even larger for traditionally underserved students.

• Create a course matrix that clearly maps out weekly readings, assignments, and due dates.

• Create rubrics for assignments that can be shared early to clearly communicate expectations.

• Create a course organization in the LMS with a clear weekly organization and weekly overviews with a “flat” navigation that allows learners to find everything for one week in one spot (Dance, 2016; Pratas, 2014).

Create class policies, such as discussion board policies, aimed at reducing or eliminating the presence of discriminatory or other harmful posts.

Consider policies that reflect flexibility related to late assignments that convey to students that they can reach out to you for extra time. Remove any requirements for documentation or justification.

Create opportunities for students to participate in the process of developing course goals, assignment requirements, and/or a schedule of deliverables and due dates

Incorporate a mix of in-person and online (i.e. blended learning) that provides you and your students a flexible course structure should you need to lean more heavily on online. This helps to habituate everyone so that transitions are less difficult.

Develop orientation or regular support modules for students that includes mental health needs and resources.

Embedded resources:

Embedded features of all courses that include access to resources (e.g. along with access to library or career services, also embed access to other mental health and crisis resources).

Offer workshops and training sessions on stress management, time management, and self-care strategies (Bladek, 2021)

Develop peer support networks for emotional support and sharing coping strategies (Bladek, 2021)

Are there any policies that disincentivize online students or instructors from engaging in self-care? If so, these should be modified or possibly even suspended.

Do any policies create inflexible options for online students that can induce stress? If so, consider how these can be modified.

Provide easy 24-7 access to mental health that is free or very low cost. What resources, workshops, phone or text messaging options, and other supports can be made available remotely or online?

Devise a plan to explicitly communicate out options and resources to online learners, e.g. by coordinating with a teaching and learning center or instructional design team to bake resource access into online interfaces.

Consider real, structural changes that can better support mental health. Consider opportunities for decompression, different schedules, or other structural changes that can better support mental health.

In study after study, the most practical advice came directly from students. Go beyond a nameless, faceless survey. Create annual focus groups or online socials that include time for online learners to share examples of how they have experienced feeling cared for by their peers, instructors, or support staff. Recognize the positive strategies students are using, and create opportunities for instructors and staff to share them with others. Ask students what they need—then deliver as much as possible. This builds trust, and higher trust helps to lower stress.