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Office for Faculty Excellence

Pedagogical Wellness

Welcome to the website dedicated to pedagogical wellness for faculty at NC State!

As educators, we often prioritize the well-being of our students, but it’s equally important to prioritize our own well-being as faculty members. Pedagogical wellness encompasses the physical, mental, emotional, and social health of educators, which in turn, can impact the quality of instruction and overall success of our students. This website aims to provide resources, strategies, and support to help NC State faculty cultivate pedagogical wellness. The best practice suggestions below are helpful to incorporate into your teaching to emphasize your support for student mental health and wellness as well as your own. We believe that by taking care of ourselves, we can create a positive and inclusive learning environment for our students, enhance our teaching effectiveness, and ultimately, foster a culture of well-being within our academic community.

  • Course Design 
  • Course Policies
    • Allow students to drop 1 or 2 assignments/quizzes “no questions asked.” This saves time and energy negotiating over emails.
    • Avoid attendance policies or build in attendance flexibility (e.g., 2-3 free sick days). Avoid asking for proof as this increases the burden on you as the instructor to verify and puts a tremendous administrative burden on counseling and medical services.
    • Structure assignment deadlines either with a soft/hard deadline or allow a grace period. (e.g., set deadline at 10 pm, but allow additional 24 hours in case anything arises) to avoid student extension requests.
  • Communication
    • Set email boundaries (e.g., 24 hours to respond and longer on weekends)
    • Use the syllabus to communicate with your students about expectations, deadlines, assignments, and communicate how to avoid needing to discuss individually with your students in your plan to communicate with your students. The liquid syllabus can also reduce anxiety and reduce student questions. 
    • Including assignment expectations in multiple places may also help to decrease confusion about assignments. 
    • Communicating in multiple ways with your students might help you reach a wider audience. Example: Welcome Letters. 
    • Consider hosting group office hours instead of one-on-one office hours.
    • Faculty are human too! Communicate that illness, family issues, disabilities affect us as well sometimes.
  • Support
    • Find your support network of peer instructors who may be experiencing similar things in terms of teaching and/or research responsibilities. 
    • Connect with your teaching community via existing programs like the Faculty Conversation Series, Back to Basics, or the RED Teaching Certifications. 
    • Find out what kind of support your department can offer if you need to be on leave for any reason.
    • Utilize professional support such as OFE consultations Utilize professional support such as DELTA and OFE consultations to assist with building your course, academic continuity, and/or troubleshooting any issues throughout the semester.
  • Syllabus 
    • Add a welcome letter to your syllabus to introduce yourself and show that you care for your students. Another option would be a liquid syllabus.
    • Transparency: Tell your students what type of pedagogical approach you are taking whether it be inclusive, trauma-informed, and/or contemplative pedagogy. 
    • Send out the syllabus prior to the first day of class.
    • Make sure your syllabus has an inviting tone. 
    • Add a visual pattern of assignments of what is due each week.
    •  Consider developing a printable calendar that students can use to keep track of what is due and when.
  • Assessment and Grading style 
    • Rethink high-stakes exams. High stakes assignments are those that a student must pass in order to pass the course.  Not only are these types of assignments very stressful for students, they also lead to cheating as some students see no other choices.  You can still assess the same amount of content using strategies that avoid high stakes.  For example, instead of a midterm and final exam, break your exams up into weekly or bi-weekly quizzes. Rather than one large project with 50% of a student’s grade, ask students to turn in pieces of the project over the course of the semester and grade them separately. Using strategies such as these not only reduces student anxiety or assignments, it also spreads the need for grading more evenly over the semester.
    • Include both formative and summative assessments. This will reduce student anxiety by letting them know earlier how they are doing in the course.
    • Consider flexible weighting strategies for assignments and texts.
    • Specifications grading can alleviate stress for instructors and students.
  • Assignments 
    • Reconsider penalties for missing deadlines. Consider a flexible deadline policy and clearly describe it in your syllabus. Such flexibility can range from eliminating all penalties to providing students with limited extensions as needed. It is not necessary for the instructor to figure out why the student might need an extension, nor is it an inclusive practice.
    • Consider revise and resubmit options.
    • Avoid scheduling due dates for major exams, projects, or assignments immediately after wellness days or fall and spring breaks.  Doing so will negate the mental health benefits of these breaks.  
    • Assess course workload. Remember that students have competing demands like other courses, work, and lives beyond the classroom. 
    • Give students choices for projects and/or submission format.
    • Make sure assignments allow for reflection and connection to life, other students, and the world.
    • Allow students a soft deadline and a hard deadline to give some space for flexibility. 
    • Consider project-based learning.
  • Class Environment/ Participation
    • Consider including Ice breakers and brain breaks: mindfulness activities, stretch breaks, dance breaks, class outdoors.
    • Consider not having an attendance policy or at least some flexibility (for example: allow 2 missed classes)
    • Give alternatives or an opt out option for content that may trigger students.
    • Have multiple forms of participation and integrate digital technology in the classroom. 
    • Use reflections, mindfulness activities, and gratitude journals to allow students to deepen their appreciation of class content.
    • Use either structured or unstructured brain breaks every 30 minutes to get students to refocus their attention.
    • Encourage self-care such as eating, sleeping, exercising.
    • Be mindful of students experiencing grief or loss. The counseling center has resources that you can share with your students. It is important to keep the lines of communication open since grief is unique for each individual and students may not feel comfortable disclosing. 
    • Make use of online education. Good online instruction can have the same or better outcomes than in-person instruction.  Furthermore, for lectures, online education has actually been shown to have better outcomes due to the ability to pause and rewatch content. . Posting at least part of your course content, whether it be lectures, slides, notes, etc. is a smart pedagogical choice that increases flexibility for students and offers faculty a scaffolding approach to achieving course outcomes. 
    • Hold online office hours.  While some students want face-to-face time with their instructors, seldom do many students take that opportunity. It’s not uncommon to see only one or two students during office hours, or none at all. Online office hours allow access to students that might otherwise not attend them. Students who live far from campus, students with mobility-related disabilities, or students who have jobs or caregiving responsibilities might find it difficult to make an extra trip to campus to come to office hours. These barriers are removed when office hours are online.
  • Communication with Students 

This site is a collaborative effort between the Office for Faculty Excellence and the Division of Academic and Student Affairs, and it was originally adapted from UC Irvine’s Pedagogical Wellness site.