Support & Prevention

Pillar of our strategy

We view wellbeing as a source of capital, and that we can nurture this aspect of personal development and support in both the design and the dissemination of curriculum, supervision, faculty support and optional development opportunities.

Bringing teaching and learning right to the core of the wellbeing strategy given all students have access to it and a relationship with it. 

Support & Prevention - Pillar of our strategy

An Inclusive Curriculum is central to the University’s 2030 strategic plan – ‘Inclusive student success.’ This also mirrors the University’s core values which are to be: ethical, respectful, transparent, inclusive, fair, challenging, confident, collaborative, and professional.

Our diverse student population bring with them their identities and interests from their personal communities forming a rich cultural base.  Our inclusive framework comprises four overarching principles:

  • Where am I in the curriculum?
  • Removing obstacles to our students’ success and progression.
  • Are our students co-creators?
  • How are we developing our inclusive lens?

These principles are our enactment of our vision as a University of Opportunity through our curriculum design and delivery. 

Mental Health and wellbeing is a strong consideration in removing obstacles to students’ success and progression. Our programme design will create an inclusive culture by including considerations of how wellbeing principles are embedded in curriculum content and pedagogy so as to enable all of our students to achieve their full potential.

We fully recognise that differing personal, circumstantial, and socio-demographic backgrounds can lend to increased mental health and wellbeing issues. To this end, we work hard to build resilience strategies across programmes and/or scaffold and stagger assessments to reduce potential stress on students, some of whom may have disabilities, lead busy and complex lives, and/or may have a fragile sense of belonging. We aim to bring in Togetherall into each module and explicit signposting of services across the programme

ASK@WLV - At present, there are many places for students to access support services, which all offer specialist advice. This requires students to know where to go and who to contact to get the help they need, and at times this can be confusing. A student enquiry may need support from several teams, and the onus is on the student, who is expected to consult with each service.

In January 2022, the University will launch ASK@WLV, bringing together customer service professionals from the University’s faculties and the Directorate of Student and Academic Services to create a central support hub and first point of contact for all student queries. The ASK@WLV team will own the query, undertake liaison with other departments, and ensure the student receives the help they need. The guiding principle of ASK@WLV is that a student should only have to tell their story once. The service will be accessible on campus in physical locations, through e:Vision, and by phone.

 

 

  • Via our Inclusivity leads, we will take a school and programme based approach to a wellbeing infused and wellbeing structured curricular supporting those leads to co explore and co create pedagogic experiences and resources, enabling academic staff to reflect on their own role, remit and relationship with wellbeing principles by design. We will make progress in order to be able to assert that all our programmes will be structured to take into consideration our students’ wellness and be responsive to understand how student obstacles can impact on their mental health and wellbeing. 
  • Through a programme based approach, we will support course and module leads in developing both a student and staff facing CANVAS page that promote mental health and wellbeing by design and support, student led-meaningful and needed resources, signposting and self-help

  • This Strategy will enable the university to deliver on the aims of the Graduate Attributes Framework, which has one of its attributes that students should “be aware of their own wellbeing and that of others”.

  • The Doctoral College’s mission is to support all staff and student researchers at the University of Wolverhampton. All of our postgraduate research students studying in the UK or abroad, part-time or full-time, are part of both their Faculty and the Doctoral College community. World leading research emerges from our Doctoral College Research News and Events - University of Wolverhampton (wlv.ac.uk) and the research culture at the University of Wolverhampton is among the best in the country, according to a national survey of postgraduate students.

  • We recognise that the Inclusive Curriculum Framework can be viewed as UG and PGT bound. There is a great deal of work to be done to infuse these principles, with a particular focus on decolonising research and ensuring an inclusive research degree. Our Doctoral College is researching and will disseminate findings and recommendations in order to take the first step towards an inclusive research degree, and research in general – which is critical if we are to have a research informed curricular that is also, in turn inclusive and informs wellbeing.
  • ASK@WLV will be an embedded and recognised central service where the friendly and professional team has comprehensive knowledge to advise on all aspects of the student journey. Students will be able to self-service on a wide range of topics in an extensive online knowledge base. Streamlined processes and University-wide collaborations will enable swift resolutions to any issues, improving staff wellbeing through shared knowledge and empowerment.

  • We will develop a range of targeted support measures for students who may face challenges during their studies (eg, disabled students, international students, widening participation and LGBTQ+ students), and tailor support for undergraduate, postgraduate taught and postgraduate research students.
  • The University currently has a range of coaching and mentoring opportunities for students, which may vary in terms of capacity and effectiveness, and may have also been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. The Wolverhampton Business School has a long running final year student mentoring scheme which began in 2011 supported by the Institute of Directors. This very successful scheme has supported numerous cohorts of students towards achieving their career aims. We will undertake a whole university review of mentoring provision in order to identify student focused mentoring provision and need, with associated recommendations.

 

JEDI is an innovative programme that provides pathways of aspiration and success for students from Black and Global Majority backgrounds. JEDI utilises workshops, mentoring and networking to create focused guidance to unlock Black and Global Majority students’ potential. JEDI is about making fair attainment possible, making ambitions visible and providing equity to the communities that need it most.

We have created a safe space as part of the JEDI module, as the module is open exclusively to our Black and Global Majority students. Within the JEDI module we are exploring health and wellbeing for our Black and Global Majority students by discussing 'racial trauma'. Racial trauma is a framework to describe the physical and emotional responses that can follow exposure to racism. Racial trauma can lead to depression, hypervigilance, chronic stress and fatigue, bodily inflammation, and symptoms similar to post traumatic stress disorder.

A new monthly inclusivity podcast has now been launched.

Hosted by Dr Ada Adeghe, Associate Dean for Inclusivity, in this first episode, Dr Ruth Shiner and Lisa Millar, Associate Deans for Students and Education in FSE and FABBS and Amy Bywater, Inclusivity Lead and Senior Lecturer in Physical Education and School of Sport, discuss how the inclusive framework for curriculum design and delivery is being applied in their areas of work.