How to Nurture User Wellbeing With Your Learning Management System
Although a learning management system (LMS) isn’t a wellness tool, institutions can leverage the right platform’s features to encourage positive wellbeing practices for their users. You wouldn’t expect someone to exhibit their best work when they’re physically ill, and the same idea applies to one’s mental health.
Higher education institutions need systems in place that look after their users’ mental health so teachers and students can be successful. With a little creativity and careful planning, you can use your LMS to encourage positive learning outcomes while nurturing your users’ wellbeing.
Why Wellbeing Is Important When It Comes to Learning
People need to take care of their mental wellbeing before they can reach their full learning potential. In a study conducted at the University of Calgary in Canada, students supported the idea that mental health is a prerequisite for academic success. Learners can’t adequately focus on gaining new knowledge when feelings of isolation, stress, anxiety, or other detriments weigh heavily on their minds.
The same can be said for instructors. Several participants in the University of Calgary study also agreed the mental health of everyone on campus—learners and teachers—mattered for students to achieve successful learning outcomes. Additional research shows that the instructor is the most essential element in online learning, and focusing on student-instructor engagement is one of many important strategies for successful online learning programs.
Unfortunately, when instructors are struggling with their wellbeing, it can be difficult for them to give their students the level of attention they need. It’s important for learning institutions to find ways to support the mental health needs of both learners and educators.
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LMS Features That Can Support User Wellbeing
When students learn in face-to-face environments, it’s easier for instructors to see when a learner might need additional support dealing with emotional distress, social anxiety, or other issues that can impact their education. Keeping up with your learners’ wellbeing can be more challenging in an online teaching environment, but leveraging your LMS features can help you identify students who might need additional support so you can take the necessary steps to help them find success.
While an LMS isn’t a wellness tool, the right provider will offer robust LMS extensions that can capture many user data points. Instructors or administrators can use data regarding student performance and engagement levels to potentially assess learner wellbeing. Reports make it easy to identify which learners aren’t logging on to the platform or completing coursework.
When instructors or administrators see patterns of disengagement in a learner’s data, it could be an indicator that it’s time to reach out and check on the student’s wellbeing. Instructors can send a message to the student through the LMS or request a one-on-one meeting with them to see how the student is managing their learning.
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Your LMS can also be used to house wellness resources. Your administrator can create a non-academic course with easy-to-access information for users (both students and instructors) who might be looking for additional support like:
- Counseling services
- Forums to connect with peers
- Mindfulness practices
- Employee assistance programs for instructors
- Other resources offered by your institution
Of course, it’s important to remember that even with support in place, stress, anxiety, and similar feelings might not be easily detectable in an online learning environment. Instructors should approach all students with empathy and do their best to develop and maintain positive relationships with their learners.
At the institutional level, it’s essential to support your instructors and offer additional training as needed to help them best assist their students. Your teachers aren’t counselors, but they’ll likely be the first to recognize a decline in their students’ wellbeing.
Use Your LMS to Encourage Connections
Your LMS can serve as another centralized hub of wellness information for your learning institution that gives both students and instructors easy access to the resources they need to stay well. You can use your LMS features to encourage collaboration and enhance communication between instructors and learners, setting students up for both academic and personal success. Remember that your LMS and its features are tools to enhance learning, but your design and intent will ultimately determine the success of your digital learning initiatives.
To get started, consider implementing some of the following strategies to encourage learner connections:
- Build connections between learners and teachers through regular announcements and reminders, assignment grading rubrics, and video calls.
- Encourage connections among learners through collaborative projects, group discussions, and social or peer-based learning activities.
- Build connections between learners and the course content by giving learners realistic scenarios, options to interact with content in more than one format, and guided class discussions.
