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At Student Minds we work hard to research and tackle the inequalities, barriers and knowledge gaps that exist in student mental health.
Join us as we learn more to create healthy university communities across the UK. |
To view other opportunities visit Smarten. |
Call for Evidence - HE in the Covid-19 Pandemic
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In March 2020, at Student Minds we began a period of listening. We gathered insights from a wide range of students, stakeholders and experts to ensure the work we did was reflective of students' quickly-changing needs.
Now, one year later, we're seeking to collate our insights into a reflective report about what students and staff have experienced and how we, as a sector, can support the HE community to move forwards positively. We want to hear from university students, recent graduates and staff members to find out how the past year has impacted students, staff and the sector and what the big challenges will be moving forwards. We’re looking for:
Follow this link below to make a submission by 17:00 on June 4th 2021. Together we can support students during the pandemic and beyond. If you are in need of support right now Student Space is here to help. |
Staff Running University Peer Support Study
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Do you work at a UK university?
Do you coordinate a student peer support programme? Does that programme aim to improve mental health and wellbeing? If yes, can you give 45 - 60 minutes to chat with one of the leading university peer support experts in the UK? What is the study about? The purpose of this research study is to understand formal university peer support approaches through the perspective of staff who support and/or manage them. We’re looking for programmes that aim to improve student mental health or wellbeing through group or one-to-one peer support. What will happen? We will interview you to understand how you approach peer support at your institution. We will also ask about the student engagement and evaluation of your programme. This will take approximately an hour. To help us collect this data, we will ask to record the interview on Microsoft Teams. Once we have transcribed the interviews, we’ll delete the recording. As a thank you for giving us your time, we’ll send you a £10 voucher. How to participate? If you would like to participate, please contact Julia Haas at [email protected] to find a time that suits you in June – July 2021. If you’re not the right person to interview, please do pass this information on to any colleagues who may be able to help. [Ethical review reference number: MRSP-20/21-23031] |
What matters to undergraduates? Exploring student quality of life
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Perhaps now more than ever, it’s important for us to understand what sort of challenges students face that impact on their quality of life. Before the pandemic hit, we spoke to undergraduate students about these challenges, and used this to develop a measure of student quality of life. Now we’d like to get the views of more students, to see which of these challenges are experienced the most often, and which have the biggest influence on the quality of life of students. This project is led by Dr Alyson Dodd, an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology at Northumbria University. Alyson is part of the leadership team for SMaRteN, a national network focused on understanding student mental health and well-being. Alyson has been a mental health researcher for more than a decade, and she has long been passionate about student mental health and well- being, especially having had personal experience of mental health difficulties when she was a student herself. Alyson lives by the sea in the North East, with her partner and their Border Terrier, Ruby, who has been a wonderful companion during lockdowns – and a reason to get out walking each day!
This project was developed in recognition that many existing questionnaires used to measure well-being and quality of life in students were not developed in collaboration with students themselves. Students have shaped this project at each step of the journey, so that the final measure of quality of life includes the priorities and experiences of students. Although times have changed a lot since we spoke to students about what a measure of their quality of life would need to capture, many of these challenges are still relevant in the context of the COVID- 19 pandemic. Our aim is to refine this measure so it can be used by universities to identify areas in which students might be struggling. |