How do we help our students thrive?
In times of crisis like those experienced worldwide in recent years, finding resilience has become more important than ever. We know that students can find study stressful and that COVID-19 can compound this stress. Deakin has a range of support mechanisms in place for staff and students, including the short Professional Resilience course on the FutureLearn platform.
In popular media, resilience is often reduced to a buzzword that means little more than suck-it-up and get-on-with-it. But understood properly resilience is a complex and nuanced psychological term that offers us ways of growing our ability to cope with stress and generate a deeper sense of our own capabilities.
We know that many students confront mental health issues – and at a higher level than their same aged peers. So, building in resources on mental health and resilience is an important part of supporting successful study and educating resilient future graduates.
The FutureLearn course Professional Resilience: Building Skills to Thrive at Work is a two week open course designed to explore ways of building personal and professional resilience. In 2021 it was updated to include how we build resilience while our routines are disrupted because of COVID-19.
Anyone can enrol in the two-week course for free and will have access to the material for four weeks. Deakin staff get upgraded access (ongoing access and certification once eligible) for free by using single-sign on to access FutureLearn Campus.
Professional Resilience: Building Skills to Thrive at Work is built around a model of resilience that outlines:
- Resilience is a process we work towards, not a defined permanent state
- We need to work with others and nurture our networks to become more resilient
- Resilience is about being able to ‘bounce back’ after difficult times
- Resilience is also about generating creative solutions to everyday problems during times of stability
Most importantly resilience is not something that some people are born with and others miss out on, resilience can be learned and it can be nurtured. It requires a systematic or ecological approach that allows us to work with others and build our strengths in the context of our personal and professional lives.
Staff who would like to use the professional resilience course as a resource within their courses can activate free access for their students by contacting the Global Studio team.