Creating healthy learning environments that promote faculty, TA, and student well-being
Learning Well is an initiative developed by the Center for Teaching and Learning in collaboration with the Office of Student Engagement and Well-being designed to support student mental health, foster social connections, and promote a culture of care right where learning happens: in the classroom.
Grounded in evidence-based practices and designed for ease of implementation, Learning Well offers five simple, but effective teaching strategies that any instructor can integrate into their courses with little effort.
Access the Learning Toolkit and Earn a Learning Well Badge
Why focus on well-being in the classroom?
When students feel connected and supported in the classroom, they are more likely to thrive academically, come to class, and persist towards graduation. Learning Well empowers instructors to make a meaningful difference by making small adjustments to their courses that they can be confident will have big impact on students’ well-being.
Designed for flexibility and ease of use, the initiative can be applied across all types of courses—large or small, in-person or online, undergraduate or graduate.
The Learning Well initative provides faculty with ideas and support for embedding wellness practices into their courses and classrooms through several resources, including this website and a Canvas site that includes a Learning Well Toolkit with resources that can be exported directly into your course shell or downloaded onto your computer.
Learning Well Toolkit: The 5 Learning Well Strategies
1. Moment-to-Arrive Slides: Individual PPT slides to be displayed as students arrive to class designed for just-in-time awareness about Georgia Tech academic, health, adn wellness resources.
2. Syllabus Statement on Student Well-Being: Examples of statements and well-being resources that can be cut and pasted directly into your own syllabus or Canvas shell.
3. Growth Mindset Reminders: A bank of growth mindset reminders that you can download onto your desktop.
4. Mid-semester Course Feedback: Instruments designed to gather mid-semester feedback from students about how they are experiencing the course.
5. Creating Connections: Prompts and recommendations to create opportunities for students to engage each other and you in the classroom.
How to participate:
Start with what feels comfortable and feasible – We have tried to take all of the guesswork out of these practices by providing you with language, prompts, examples, instruments that can be incorportated directly into any course with little to no modification.
Build your teaching evidence:
We have created a Learning Well Badge to help participating instructors develop verifiable evidence of quality teaching that supports student success. Each practice can earn a Token; all five practices can earn a Badge. Learn more about the Learning Well Badge in the Learning Well Canvas site.