There are many things that you can do from the start of semester to reduce the risk of student distress when they engage with challenging, contentious, or triggering topics.
Consider your course content
Consider how particular challenging or sensitive topics contribute to the course content or your students’ skills, such as critical thinking. Think about whether discussions around these topics are aligned with course learning outcomes, and therefore an essential part of the course, or supplementary to the learning outcomes.
Be transparent about course content and activities
Students are best placed to know what they individually may find challenging or triggering. These situations are highly personal and subject to individual context and experiences. It is not possible to anticipate what is difficult or distressing for all students in all situations. So, you should be transparent about the type of content and activities students will engage with, giving your students greater autonomy in managing their own wellbeing.
Here are some ways that you can be transparent about what students will engage with in your course.
- State the topic coverage clearly in the Course Summary. This provides students with the option not to enrol in the course (if it is an elective) or time to plan and put support strategies in place.
- Provide content and/or trigger warnings if appropriate in your LMS course site, course summary and/or in the first or relevant lecture. You may provide overarching warnings for regular topics in your course, or individually for specific topics or texts.
- Proactively seek feedback or input from students on whether the topics you have identified and the content warnings you have provided are sufficient and make changes accordingly. You could announce this using the LMS announcement function and/or in a lecture and give students the option to respond privately to you if they wish.
- Be transparent with students about the rationale for including or omitting specific topics from the curriculum, fostering a sense of trust and accountability in the learning process.
- Be explicit with students about how valuable skills in respectful discussion and dialogue will be for them in their academic and professional lives. Being able to discuss challenging topics with others in a respectful and reasoned manner is an extremely important employability skill.
- Provide students the opportunity to contact you in advance if they would like to individually discuss what to expect, their personal circumstances, or to seek clarification. Encourage them to let you know if they need to screen for particular content that may not be typically listed.
Content warnings
Content warnings enable students to prepare for upcoming discussions. You can find more information and some useful references about content warnings in the Creating accessible learning environments – Content Warnings as an accessibility practice Learning and Teaching blog post. Your College may also have guidance.
These warnings are not intended to stop students from engaging with the content but allow them time to prepare, such as ensuring they are engaging with content in a safe, appropriate environment (e.g. not on the train or in a café), don’t inadvertently expose others (e.g. family members) to the content, and prepare any relevant mental health strategies (e.g. for post-traumatic stress disorder).
Students are most likely to engage thoroughly and more resiliently with the intended content when they feel safe, focused, and supported. They are best able to determine for themselves how and when to do so.
Identify optional topics
If you believe specific topics are supplementary to learning outcomes, exercise discretion in including it. Avoid using polarising content that is not aligned with the learning outcomes for the sole purpose of increasing engagement, e.g. to prompt debate and discussion.
Consider instead the outcome of that engagement, both the potential for harm to some students and the potential for transformative learning or understanding of stated learning outcomes.
You may choose to include optional or supplementary content in your course to:
- deepen understanding of topics, ideas, and concepts
- develop critical thinking skills.
If this optional content is potentially challenging, there are some ideas for what you can do.
- Clearly identify that the course content is supplementary or optional.
- Explain why the supplementary content has been included in the course.
- Be clear that students can choose not to engage with the optional content without negatively impacting their studies.
- Provide alternate activities (e.g. a related self-chosen text that aligns with the week’s content, or an extended engagement with a previous topic that is less challenging).
Establish a safe and respectful learning environment
Discussions that are both academically challenging and respectful are more likely to occur in learning environments where students already feel engaged, part of a community, and heard. Creating a space where students feel comfortable expressing and challenging ideas can also increase their overall engagement in your course.
Below are some ideas on how to do this.
- Set up asynchronous weekly discussions which cover topics that are less challenging but still provide scope for a variety of views and opinions. The asynchronous format can give students time to engage more thoughtfully and respectfully.
- Where possible, plan to have highly challenging conversations later in the semester, when students have had the opportunity to develop rapport with one another.
- Avoid using asynchronous discussions for highly challenging topics in unless you can monitor them very closely.
Be actively engaged in discussions
- Be present in both asynchronous and synchronous discussions and actively model respect for differing perspectives.
- Explicitly invite dissenting views from your students and model respectful engagement in the subsequent discussion. When doing this, take care not to single out specific students for dissenting views.
- Demonstrate interest in and respect for your students through your interaction with them, especially in your response to any questions they may ask (e.g. thank a student for their question before answering it or have a brief chat with students at the beginning of a tutorial).
- When responding to a question, ensure your tone is interested and supportive even if you feel that the question was overly simplistic or off topic.
Check in with your students
- Seek clarification and check that students feel their questions have been fully answered.
- If time is insufficient for a full answer to a question, offer an alternative way for the student to receive an answer, such as a location to find the information, raising the conversation later or in another format (e.g. consultation or discussion forum). Being dismissive of a student’s question, even if unintentional, quickly creates a closed and disengaged learning environment.
- Conduct a brief check in at the beginning of tutorials to see how students are feeling about their studies.
Establish expectations and boundaries
It is important that there is a mutual understanding around course content and expectations of student and staff behaviour. In particular, establish clear discussion guidelines and boundaries for respecting perspectives and experiences at the start of the semester. If possible, involve your students in deciding what the expectations and boundaries should be.
Students have responsibilities under the ANU Student Code of Conduct and it is important that any course expectations and boundaries are aligned with that Code. Explicitly discuss ANU Policy: Academic Freedom and Freedom of Speech and the difference between the intent to humiliate or intimidate someone and someone feeling shocked or offended.
Below are some examples of expectations to agree to with your students.
- Avoid absolute statements, e.g. ‘all of….’ ‘every single time…’
- Use objective language rather than words that hold moral judgement, e.g. ‘wrong’ ‘evil’, ‘disgusted’, ‘unnatural’.
- Don’t interrupt others when they are speaking or communicating
- Apply possible time limits for individual students to speak
- Apply a maximum number of times an individual student can speak
- Avoid blame, speculation, and inflammatory language.
- Opinions that are discriminatory, hate speech, personal attacks on other students or groups are not part of a respectful discussion and students expressing these opinions will be requested to stop speaking
- Do not make assumptions about other students or specific groups
Suggestions from the Center for Research on Learning & Teaching, University of Michigan
Sourced from the CRLT Guidelines for classroom interactions (opens external website):
- Share responsibility for including all voices in the conversation.
- Listen respectfully. Don’t interrupt, turn to technology, or engage in private conversations while others are speaking. Use attentive, courteous body language. Comments that you make (whether asking for clarification, sharing critiques, or expanding on a point) should reflect that you have paid attention to the previous speakers’ comments.
- Be open to changing your perspectives based on what you learn from others. Try to explore new ideas and possibilities. Think critically about the factors that have shaped your perspectives. Seriously consider points-of-view that differ from your current thinking.
- Understand that we are bound to make mistakes in this space, as anyone does when approaching complex tasks or learning new skills. Strive to see your mistakes and others’ as valuable elements of the learning process.
- Understand that your words have effects on others. Speak with care. If you learn that something you’ve said was experienced as disrespectful or marginalising, listen carefully and try to understand that perspective. Learn how you can do better in the future.
- Understand that others will come to these discussions with different experiences from yours. Be careful about assumptions and generalizations you make based only on your own experience. Be open to hearing and learning from other perspectives.
- Understand that there are different approaches to solving problems. If you are uncertain about someone else’s approach, ask a question to explore areas of uncertainty. Listen respectfully to how and why the approach could work.
