What If You Had a Higher Ed Magic Wand?

Today we’re going to talk about student mental health, infusing applicable humor into the classroom, emotion science, and collective effervescence. 

By implementing temperature checks and reflections, you can assess how your students are feeling. Include a mental health check question like, What did you do to take care of yourself this week? And then at the end of the reflection, ask your students, Is there anything else you’d like to share? 

You’ll be asked to consider the question, If you held the higher ed magic wand, where would you start to create a humor climate? What would you do? What would your colleague do? 

Additionally, we’ll cover emotion science. That is, when we feel bad, we can't learn as effectively. And when we feel good, it benefits our learning. Lastly, we’ll go over collective effervescence, which represents the synchrony we feel when we are together and in communication with one another. Flower Darby explains, "We want to extend this sense of belonging to our students, no matter who they are, no matter their personality, their preferences, their identities. We want all of our students to feel like they belong so that they can thrive in our classes."

Recommended resources (Please note, the resources used in this specific episode are from last year's Teaching Professor Online Conference. For similar and new content, register for this year's Teaching Professor Online Conference):