Wellbeing

Event date and time: Thursday 2nd July 2026, 11.00 – 12.00 Abstract Students entering higher education often face uncertainty as they navigate academic expectations and future pathways. Success requires not only academic competence but also resilience, wellbeing, and a sense of belonging. Learning Development (LD) can support these needs by combining academic skill-building with approaches that strengthen personal resources and promote inclusive student experiences. Although wellbeing is closely linked to resilience and can be enhanced through simple, everyday practices (Fredrickson, 2001; Roepke & Seligman, 2015; Leppin et al., 2014), wellbeing-focused activities remain limited within many higher education curricula despite rising […]

Event date and time: 21 May 2026, 15.00 – 16.00 Quiet Spaces, Collective Voices: Creative Pedagogies for Reflection and Renewal Educational institutions, and institutions more broadly, often overlook the value of our collective narratives and the stories of those who shaped them. This session offers an active yet meditative space for attendees to engage in and reflect on creative and liberatory practices that have been shared across our community – and in doing so to implicitly honour some of the individuals and collectives who have made contributions to education, society, and our community, whether big or small. The LD community […]

Event date and time: Friday 23 January 2026, 14.00 – 15.00 In this webinar, Dr Katharine Jewitt will chat through various topics relating to the menopause. Expect an event packed with accurate information, lots of energy, practical tips and definitely no doom and gloom! Menopause is still not open discussion in the workplace ‒ despite the fact that nearly half of the world’s population experiences or will experience this biological transition, which marks the end of a woman’s menstrual cycle and fertility. Menopause has always been around, but menopausal women are now the fastest growing workforce demographic. Menopause is a […]

This #Take5 is brought to you by Jack Rundell, Academic Skills Advisor at University Studies at Eastern Education Group. While you may be familiar with widely promoted benefits of mindfulness for developing calm and reducing stress, in this article Jack highlights some more specific applications for Learning Developers. Could mindfulness make us more aware of the emotional reactions we have to our students and allow us to respond better? Could mindfulness provide valuable insights in the writing process, particularly into flow and flux of emotions we experience while writing? Jack argues that it could, and more! Thoughts on mindfulness and […]

This #Take5 is brought to you from Lisa Clughen, Nottingham Trent University. It is both about the importance of movement in HE – and an invitation to participate in a small research project focussing on qigong-based mindful movement in HE. #Take5 steps? Taking Positive Steps in Learning and Teaching: An Invitation to Participate in Mindful Movement Research. Image: Lisa Clughen doing some Mindful Movement at the Lourve-Lens, France If you could do a very short activity during your working day that, research suggests, could reap wide-ranging rewards for your physical, cognitive and mental health and wellbeing, and in fact for […]

Authors Professor Debbie Holley and Dr David Biggins provide an overview of their research published in issue 27 of the Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education. Their paper is titled: Designing for student wellbeing: challenging assumptions about where our students learn. Our work started with students reporting ‘technostress’ during the pandemic (and yes staff experienced this as well) and reporting that they turned to family and friends to seek support, with only 18% turning to the excellent online materials and signposting Universities offered in lockdown. Digital equity remains an issue across the board, and intersectionality of class, race and […]

This #Take5 blog is brought to you from Debbie Holley and David Biggins, two researchers from Bournemouth University who are interested in the digital experiences of students, with a focus on digital wellbeing and support. Mind the gap “Be more mindful about the situation, be more kind”. Advice to academic staff from an undergraduate student. “Be better at supporting students who need help or who are behind” “Be more understanding especially with non-visible disabilities and health issues!” This blog post reports on a piece of work we carried out in May-June 2021 during the Covid-19 pandemic where we asked students […]

Session abstract:  The Open University Business School is leading a research project on online learning and strategic planning through, and post, lockdown in English secondary schools. This workshop focuses on one of the key themes that has emerged from the qualitative research: wellbeing of educators through the pandemic. The workshop provides an engaging and motivational look at how learning developers move into recovery beyond Covid-19. There are a series of slides interspersed with questions for participants to pause, reflect and take part in group discussion. The workshop shares the latest research exploring developments in positive psychology, neuroscience and resilience to […]

Make like an ant? This #Take5 post is brought to you from Dr Katharine Jewitt from The Open University who shares what we can learn for our teaching and learning online from ants. Katharine is looking back at what we have adapted to this year – highlighting the lessons learned that we can take forward in our practice – especially for those of us who will continue with some (or all) online delivery next year.  For those of you who already feel a bit too ant like in the version of Technology Enhanced Learning that is emerging post-pivot – please […]

The Meditation Project – Kent We decided to start the new academic year with a meditation – rather than either a bang or a whimper, appropriate as either would be – and have invited Louise Frith, University of Kent, to share her experiences of building meditation resources with and for her students. This is what Louise has to say: “The meditation sessions were great, I realised it was not just me who is feeling overwhelmed.” (Stage 1 student). The meditation project at Kent was developed from a growing awareness of the stress that students experienced related to their studies. Firstly we established a […]