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We know that students spend a great deal of their time online, so it’s important to ensure that they have the skills to build supportive digital communities and to intervene if they see disrespect or harassment. Students can all play a role in shaping online communities in which everyone can thrive. When students build and participate in digital spaces that reflect core community values, disrespect and harassment become less likely. If problems do arise, it’s easier to address them.

Many of the skills that we use to intervene in bystander situations in person also apply in digital spaces. In a 2015 study of adolescents and young adults, bystanders stepped in at similar rates when someone was being harassed online as they did when an incident happened in person (Journal of Youth and Adolescence). In fact, bystanders were most likely to step in when someone was being harassed both in person and online.

You can help students build supportive online communities by emphasizing the following strategies, perhaps during student leadership trainings or classroom discussions. Additionally, you can put these tools into practice yourself, such as in university social media groups or online courses.

1) Reflect on your goals for the online community

• What are our core values for this space?
• What would be the best possible version of this space?
• What are practical, everyday strategies for realizing these goals?

2) Clearly communicate your expectations

• Create community guidelines for digital spaces.
• People are surprisingly attentive to clearly communicated group guidelines. A 2016 analysis of the Reddit thread r/science (which has more than 13 million subscribers) found that posting page rules increased users’ compliance with the rules and even increased the number of comments made by newcomers on certain posts.

3) Respond if people fall short of your expectations

• Don’t wait for serious disrespect, harassment, or hateful speech to respond.
• Redirect the community back to its intended purpose (e.g., remind students that an online classroom forum is only for discussing coursework).
• Reiterate the community guidelines.

4) Encourage members to actively participate in the community

• Empower students to reinforce community guidelines by calling out inappropriate comments, redirecting group conversations, and supporting each other by posting positive comments.
• This provides students with the opportunity to have an active role in creating and maintaining their positive online community

5) Intervene if the situation escalates

• If you encounter serious disrespect, consider reporting it to the website. Most social media sites have easy-to-use reporting methods.
• Report harassment to a university official, such as a dean or Title IX coordinator.

When students take these small actions, they can have a substantial impact. They will not only stop harmful behavior but also set a positive example for their peers. A significant body of research on social norms theory shows that when students believe their peers expect them to behave a certain way, they’re more likely to behave that way. So when they set positive community norms and don’t tolerate harmful behavior in an online setting, it sets the tone for others to follow suit.

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Reading Time: 5 minutes[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text] Counting macros, going paleo, and cutting out carbs might be trendy on campus. However, research shows that diets, which typically have strict rules about what and how much to eat, aren’t an effective way for students to maintain healthy eating habits long term.[/vc_column_text][vc_custom_heading text=”Here’s why” font_container=”tag:p|font_size:20|text_align:left|color:%23d44d43″ google_fonts=”font_family:Roboto%20Condensed%3A300%2C300italic%2Cregular%2Citalic%2C700%2C700italic|font_style:700%20bold%20regular%3A700%3Anormal” css=”.vc_custom_1506625006690{margin-bottom: 5px !important;}”][vc_column_text]

• Less enjoyment “Diets deprive us both physically and psychologically of things we tend to really like. When you limit yourself from something that you really like, it actually comes back to bite you in the long run,” says Dr. Brian Wansink, director of the Cornell University Food and Brand Lab in New York and author of the books Mindless Eating (Bantam, 2010) and Slim by Design (William Morrow, 2014). “As a result, diets tend to be very unsustainable.”
• Biological changes When researchers followed up with competitors on a popular weight-loss show six years after they’d dieted to the extreme, they found they’d gained most of the weight back (and that their transformations had actually caused major metabolism slowdowns that persisted for years), according to the study published in Obesity. This isn’t a new phenomenon either—metabolic changes post weight loss are likely one of the reasons it’s so hard to keep the pounds off long term, according to a meta-analysis in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.
• Risk of long-term restriction The more restrictive the diet, the harder it is to keep up, and the more you run the risk of getting into dangerous restrictive eating territory, says Tammy Ostroski, doctor of nursing and manager of the health clinics at Arizona State University. “The thing that concerns me is that students start thinking, ‘I can’t eat this, I can’t eat that,’ and then they tend to binge—it becomes a negative feedback loop.”

What works, say both the experts and the research, are behavioral changes. The idea is to “change the convenience, the attractiveness, and how normal it is to eat the right foods,” says Dr. Wansink.

In addition to educating students about the pitfalls of dieting compared to research-backed strategies for healthy eating, give students a leg up on healthy habits by optimizing their eating environments on campus.

1. Keep healthy foods in view and easily accessible. Small tweaks like offering students precut fruit can have a big influence on eating habits. “If you’re going to have food visible, make it [healthy] food,” says Dr. Wansink.
2. Offer smaller packages of snacks. Providing snacks at a campus event? Consider investing in individually sized rations to keep portions in check effortlessly. Simply eating from smaller packages makes a difference. In a 2007 study, participants who were given snacks in large packages consumed 30–50 percent more than those who were given the same food in smaller packages, according to a study published in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association.
3. Downsize your dishes. If you’re providing students with pizza or ice cream, or offering other serve-yourself foods, purchase smaller plates or bowls. Doing so can reduce how much we’re eating, according to a 2012 study in the Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior.
4. Provide students with strategies for mindful eating. Pair up with other offices and departments on campus to bring awareness to mindful eating. Simply paying attention to internal and external eating cues and becoming more aware of the reasons behind eating helped improve participants’ body image perceptions and decreased unhealthy eating behaviors, researchers found in a 2014 study published in the American Journal of Health Promotion.

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When it comes to preventing sexual harassment and assault, small actions can make a big difference. When students see disrespect or pressure, they can practice “bystander intervention”: stepping in to reinforce community values and prevent harm. This isn’t a new or complicated skill. Most students already intervene often: checking in on a friend or speaking up when people make hurtful comments.

Administrators, faculty, and staff can encourage students to intervene in a wide range of situations, particularly professional ones.

Students may worry about intervening in professional settings such as internships, work-study placements, or part-time jobs. They are likely to hold low-status positions and may worry about the consequences of speaking up, especially if the power dynamic is uneven. It’s important to emphasize that there are many ways to effectively intervene and that they can use the skills they’ve already been practicing in social situations in new contexts, including professional environments.

Emphasize to students that they should expect to feel safe and respected at all times in the workplace and can help ensure that others feel the same way. Here are some ideas:

• Work with offices that manage work-study and internship placements to give students clear expectations of appropriate workplace behavior. Ensure that students are familiar with support resources, such as Title IX coordinators (for on-campus jobs) or Human Resources representatives.
• Remind students that the most effective interventions are often small, subtle, and even unnoticed. Emphasize the value of checking in with a person who is being targeted, not participating in harmful behavior, or redirecting conversation back to work matters. These small changes can have a surprisingly large impact.
• Encourage students to intervene when the stakes are still low. It’s much easier to intervene when situations are relatively low stakes, such as before a disrespectful comment becomes a pattern. Casual disrespect can escalate to become more seriously harmful.
• Teach students that intervention is a part of professionalism. Students who are attentive to the people around them and take steps to ensure that their workplaces are respectful are better employees. Present bystander intervention as a part of professional development, and let students know that they will use these skills throughout their careers.

To learn more about bystander intervention, check out Cornell University’s bystander initiative, “Intervene,” that includes videos, resources, and workshop materials. This interactive training, useful for both undergraduate and graduate students, offers concrete strategies for intervening in a wide range of social, academic, and professional settings.

Strategies developed by the Communication and Consent Educator program at Yale University.

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Succeeding academically requires students to create effective study habits and develop systems that best support their goals. Yet many students aren’t clearly defining what those goals are, strategizing about the effectiveness of their current study methods, or thinking about alternate approaches.

Metacognition, or thinking about thinking, is an easy way for students to improve their study techniques and may even boost their grades, too. Researchers at Stanford University in California found that applying some of the principles of metacognition—setting goals, thinking about resources, and crafting a plan—made a difference in students’ test results. Students who thought through a study plan did better on their exams than those who did not map out a plan, according to the 2017 study in Psychological Science. They also reported feeling less stressed during the prep process.

How to help students be more strategic about studying

• Encourage them to think about their options before making a study plan. Suggest that students list out all the methods and resources they can access and then think critically about which ones will be most helpful. “Learners should take the time to explicitly think through why they want to use each resource for learning,” says Dr. Patricia Chen, a postdoctoral research fellow at Stanford and one of the authors of the study.
• Keep lists of on-campus resources visible and easily accessible. Students often forget about school-provided resources such as tutoring services, scheduled study groups, or office hours. Remind them that these additional supports are available.
• Suggest that they make a detailed study plan. Participants in the Stanford study were asked to plan when, where, and how they would use the study resources they identified. Suggest that your students do the same. They can make a chart that lists out the resources they’re using along with a specific plan for how to use them.
• Help them set realistic goals. “Goal setting helps learners clarify exactly what they want to achieve and focuses them on their goal as they plan out their studying,” Dr. Chen says. Encourage students to have a goal every time they study, both a short-term one, such as learning a specific theory or achieving a specific result, and a long-term one, such as getting into a grad program or using their newfound skill on the job.
• Remind them to keep track and keep trying. If your students are feeling discouraged by an undesired result or missed goal, encourage them to take a deeper look at their methods and ask important questions. What could they do differently to prepare? Are there other resources they could use next time around?

More ideas for using metacognition with your students: Inside Higher Ed

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Sometimes, people dismiss “affirmative consent” as a series of awkward verbal questions: “May I put my hand on your leg? What about on your thigh?” But this isn’t realistic to how people actually communicate.

In everyday life, we’re skilled at picking up on subtle verbal and nonverbal signals of agreement and refusal. For example, when we ask someone for a favor, it’s easy to tell whether they are agreeing or refusing. If the signals are mixed or confusing—that is, if the situation is ambiguous—it’s easy to spot that as well.[vc_tta_accordion style=”modern” shape=”square” color=”mulled-wine” gap=”10″ c_icon=”chevron” active_section=”0″ collapsible_all=”true” no_fill=”true”][vc_tta_section title=”Agreement looks like…” tab_id=”1502053155006-0bc7fa8f-a0d0″][vc_custom_heading text=”Verbal signs” font_container=”tag:p|font_size:20|text_align:left|color:%2350485b” google_fonts=”font_family:Roboto%20Condensed%3A300%2C300italic%2Cregular%2Citalic%2C700%2C700italic|font_style:700%20bold%20regular%3A700%3Anormal” css=”.vc_custom_1502743999165{margin-bottom: -10px !important;border-bottom-width: -100px !important;padding-bottom: 0px !important;}”][vc_column_text]

• Brief, direct answers, such as “Sure!”
• Concrete planning (e.g., “I’d love to! When?”)

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• Direct eye contact
• A step toward you
• Nodding and smiling
• Initiating action

[/vc_column_text][/vc_tta_section][vc_tta_section title=”Disagreement looks like…” tab_id=”1502056706073-d9074cb5-1cbe”][vc_custom_heading text=”Verbal signs” font_container=”tag:p|font_size:20|text_align:left|color:%2350485b” google_fonts=”font_family:Roboto%20Condensed%3A300%2C300italic%2Cregular%2Citalic%2C700%2C700italic|font_style:700%20bold%20regular%3A700%3Anormal” css=”.vc_custom_1502743984426{margin-bottom: -10px !important;border-bottom-width: -100px !important;padding-bottom: 0px !important;}”][vc_column_text]

• Long, indirect answers with pauses, such as “Oh, I’d love to…but I actually have to finish a paper…”

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• Avoiding eye contact
• Looking closed off
• Leaning away

[/vc_column_text][/vc_tta_section][/vc_tta_accordion][vc_column_text]Research shows we use the same everyday signals—both verbal and nonverbal—to communicate interest in sexual situations as we do in everyday life. For example, study participants reported easily being able to understand their partner’s subtle, nonverbal forms of agreement and refusal during casual sexual encounters, according to a 2010 study of 21 young adults published in Culture, Health, and Sexuality. They also described interpreting these cues in the same way they would interpret agreement and refusal in nonsexual social encounters.

By drawing students’ attention to their ability to interpret signals of agreement and refusal, we can demonstrate that consent is straightforward.

Moving beyond consent to enthusiasm

While consent is a critical baseline, we can encourage our students to aspire for more. All their interactions need to be consensual, but they should also be engaged, wanted, and enthusiastic. Building communities in which sexual respect is the norm may reduce the risk of sexual violence by making manipulation and disrespect stand out more clearly. And, of course, a positive sexual and social culture will lead to better outcomes for everyone.

Foster a culture of enthusiastic consent by providing opportunities for communication and reflection

When speaking with students about sexual consent, emphasize the importance of genuine conversations about desire. You can help make these conversations more likely by giving students opportunities to think about and articulate what they want, both sexually and socially.

Give students time and space to reflect on what they want at social gatherings

• At dances or campus-sponsored parties, try setting up quiet, well-lit areas with comfortable chairs. With very little prompting, students will come to these areas to take a break from the dance floor and catch up with their dates or friends.
• Before large campus events, try setting up bulletin boards where students can share one thing that they’re looking forward to about the event. This gives students a chance to reflect on their desires and reminds them that there are many ways to be social.
• Whenever possible, emphasize that students make different choices about intimacy, sex, and romance. Consider creating avenues for upperclassmen to share stories about how they’ve navigated social life at college (e.g., in the school newspaper or via a student panel) to demonstrate the diversity of their choices to younger students.

Help students reflect on their desires

We can help students reach enthusiastic encounters by prompting them to think about what they want from intimacy, romance, sex, and love. While some of these questions are deeply personal, much of this reflection happens in a community setting. Try building questions about intimacy into moments where students reflect on their values, such as during first-year seminars, group meetings, or leadership trainings.

Encourage questions, such as:

• What am I looking for from sex and romance? How has that changed over time?
• What are my core values about how I treat other people? How can I live those out?
• What kind of values do we, as a community, hold about sexuality? How can we create a campus where everyone feels respected and supported in their choices?

Some of these questions are best answered privately, but even in a group setting, you can use writing exercises to enable internal reflection. In an appropriate setting, these questions can also be good starting points for group discussion.

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Reading Time: 3 minutes[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Perfectionism can be difficult to spot as a problem, especially among high-performing students and in high-stress environments. But it’s critical to pay attention to students who are struggling with the pressure to be perfect because it can have serious effects on their mental health, academic performance, and self-esteem. The defining characteristic of perfectionism is a fear of making mistakes, according to research by Dr. Thomas Greenspon published in Psychology in the Schools (2014).

“Hallmarks of perfectionism include an exaggerated concern over any mistakes, lofty and unrealistic self-expectations, harsh and intense self-criticism, feeling other people need you to be perfect, and nagging doubts about performance abilities,” says Dr. Simon Sherry, a psychologist and associate professor at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia, Canada.

Perfectionism looks different for everyone. Here’s what to look for in your students

• Feelings of inadequacy Those who struggle with perfectionism often feel that they’re not good enough, according to Greenspon’s research. If they do happen to make some mistakes, perfectionistic people are likely to take that personally. Their slip-ups become reflections of themselves as people, not just of their performance or achievement.
• Setting rigid rules Perfectionistic people take rule-setting to an extreme, one that can get in the way of daily functioning. This intense structure can lead to other stressful and time-consuming habits, such as over-checking work to excess or missing deadlines, according to research published in 2016 in JMIR Research Protocols.
• Procrastinating on assignments or never turning them in at all Students struggling with perfectionism are often consumed with making sure that every last detail is perfect. While some may never miss a deadline, others might finish tests late, hand in assignments past deadline, or never finish them at all, according to a 2014 study published in Psychology in the Schools.

So how can you help?

[/vc_column_text][vc_custom_heading text=”Build a community that values the learning process, not just the results” font_container=”tag:p|font_size:20|text_align:left|color:%23000000″ google_fonts=”font_family:Roboto%20Condensed%3A300%2C300italic%2Cregular%2Citalic%2C700%2C700italic|font_style:700%20bold%20regular%3A700%3Anormal”][vc_column_text]Encourage your students to think critically about what they’re learning, not just how they’re performing. Share examples of mistakes that you’ve made to reframe the idea that perfection is a requirement for success.

To prevent people from attributing their shortcomings to personal flaws, and to draw attention to how much failure it takes to get where you want to go, a Princeton professor created a nontraditional résumé. Share it with your students, or make one of your own.

• CV of failures

[/vc_column_text][vc_custom_heading text=”Be more transparent about failure” font_container=”tag:p|font_size:20|text_align:left|color:%23000000″ google_fonts=”font_family:Roboto%20Condensed%3A300%2C300italic%2Cregular%2Citalic%2C700%2C700italic|font_style:700%20bold%20regular%3A700%3Anormal”][vc_column_text]In response to the pressure that students feel to perform, some campuses are highlighting the times they didn’t get it right. Stanford University created The Resilience Project, a combination of events and programs that feature students, faculty, and staff talking about setbacks, failures, and learning from mistakes. Consider doing the same on your campus.

• The Resilience Project

[/vc_column_text][vc_custom_heading text=”Know your resources and share them with your students” font_container=”tag:p|font_size:20|text_align:left|color:%23000000″ google_fonts=”font_family:Roboto%20Condensed%3A300%2C300italic%2Cregular%2Citalic%2C700%2C700italic|font_style:700%20bold%20regular%3A700%3Anormal”][vc_column_text]If you see your students struggling with unrealistic expectations, self-imposed pressure to be perfect, or procrastination, make sure you know what resources are available to help and have that information visible and readily available. Your counseling center might offer workshops on perfectionism, or tutoring services can help with time management. The more you normalize reaching out, the more likely students are to feel comfortable doing so.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row] [school_resource sh101resources=’no’ category=’mobileapp,counselingservices, studentsucess, studentsucess, helpdesk’] Get help or find out more Article sources

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Student loan debt isn’t the only deficit students have to worry about—sleep debt can also leave them feeling depleted. “Sleep debt is an accumulation of sleep deprivation,” says Dr. Michael Breus, a clinical psychologist in California and fellow of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine. It’s a big issue: Nearly 70 percent of college students reported that they sleep less than eight hours a night, according to a 2010 study in the Journal of Adolescent Health. Sleep problems rank third on students’ list of issues that affect their academic success, according to the American College Health Association’s National College Health Assessment (Fall 2016).

Sleep debt can affect students’ overall mental, physical, and emotional health, including:

Academic performance Students who are sleep deprived struggle more academically and are at a higher risk of failing compared with those who are getting enough rest on a consistent basis, says a 2014 study in Nature and Science of Sleep. “Sleep deprivation affects cognitive function directly and quickly,” says Dr. Breus.

Mood Female college students who reported nightly sleep debts of two hours or more were significantly more likely to report depressive symptoms than those with smaller debts, a 2010 study in Psychiatry Research found.

Short of physically putting students to bed each night, how can administrators, faculty, and staff build a campus that promotes healthy sleep rather than one that glamorizes all-nighters? Here are some places to start:   

Spread sleep hygiene awareness

Only a quarter of students report that they’re getting information from their colleges about healthy sleep habits, according to the National College Health Assessment (Fall 2016). But over 60 percent of students say they want that information. To close the gap, launch a public awareness campaign and train student leaders and staff to share strategies for building healthy sleep habits. A semester-long study at Macalester College in Minnesota, found that students who received sleep health information from campus staff two or three times throughout the semester reported fewer negative sleep habits.

Offer a sleep course

Creating a class about sleep is a way to boost students’ sleep hygiene. Stanford University in California created a course dedicated to sleep behaviors back in the 1970s. Today, it’s so popular there’s a wait list. Based on Stanford’s success, New York University, the University of Missouri, and others have implemented similar courses. And so can you.

Educate your educators

Campus staff can sometimes be in the best position to spot widespread sleep deprivation, so don’t stop the awareness campaign with students. Train college professionals to be able to provide information to students and intervene if they notice their students are routinely nodding off in class.

Create a sleep-friendly space on campus

Studies show that students who take more naps do better in class. College students with GPAs of 3.5 and higher were much more likely to be nappers than were their peers with lower GPAs in a 2010 study in Sleep and Breathing. With that in mind, nap pods, library cots, and special nap rooms on campus are becoming more popular. Schools like the University of Michigan and James Madison University in Virginia have established campus nap zones to make it easier for students to practice good sleep habits with the same diligence they approach good study habits.

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Sometimes, attending to the unwanted “details” of our social culture—like a negative stereotype or an offhand comment—can feel like an unnecessary luxury. We may feel it is more important to address violence and coercion directly. But those everyday negative interactions provide camouflage for violence and coercion. When disrespect and disregard are normalized, it becomes more difficult to see them escalating into behaviors that are undeniably harmful.

In contrast, when communities expect respect and mutuality, it is much easier to spot behaviors that go against that norm. By challenging casual disrespect when we see it—and setting up conversations so that disrespect does not emerge in the first place—we can build communities where everyone expects to be treated well. Students, faculty, and staff can all ensure that everyday conversations reflect core community values of respect and kindness.

A positive culture is the best protection against sexual violence. Cultural and organizational change may seem like an ambitious goal, but the evidence shows that it’s achievable. That’s according to Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard (Broadway Business, 2010), by Chip Heath and Dan Heath, which examines individual, organizational, and societal transformations.

This means that even small actions can have a big impact in building a safe, supportive campus culture. By ensuring that their conversations about romance, sex, and social life are respectful, students can help to dismantle “the cultural scaffolding” of assault. Individual students can transform campus culture by subtly shifting the tone of conversations with their peers. Faculty and staff can support and praise students who strive to build more respectful conversations, and they can model it themselves.

Here’s how to get started

• Students can reduce “ambient pressure”—a feeling that you must act a certain way in order to fit in—by modeling that students make diverse choices about social life.
• Similarly, faculty and staff can ask questions that open up new options for student conversations. Avoid assumptions that all students are behaving the same way, and give students opportunities to share their diverse social choices with one another.
• If you hear students engaging in disrespectful, stereotyping, or pressuring conversations, intervene. Ask questions of your own that invite kinder and more thoughtful discussion.
• At an institution, work to define and share a clear vision for what you want campus culture to look like. What are your values, and what concrete steps can you take to live them out?
• Encourage student groups and communities to identify their own core values, and to plan events and interactions that reflect these values.
• Cultivate a shared “growth mind-set”: the belief that the effort to build a positive culture will be effective and worthwhile, and that setbacks are part of the process.

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