Conference summary by: Nicole Marcisz
Instructional Designer
Instructional Design & Technology
|
Overall notes, tips and key take-aways
There
were many themes of balancing work and life both personally and as we teach our
students
To some degree everyone probably struggles with finding a
balance with work, family, life, and perhaps school. The good news is that we
can personally take control and formulate solutions to achieving the balance. The
bad news is that sometimes the pursuit of balance itself compounds the stress!
We really need to be proactive by gathering tools and seeking knowledge and
information on how to accomplish balance.
Personal
- Learn to
recognize when you are out of balance. (ideally we want this to occur
before you get sick or end up in ER) DO
NOT ignore the warning signs! Listen to your body.
- Get real and assess your smart phone addiction. BreakFree is an app that acknowledges your smartphone
addiction and helps you break it by recording the amount of time you spend on
it.
- How long can you go without your smartphone? Reflect
on this.
-
Research from 2015 shows that on average adults
check their cell phone 46X a day. How many times in an hour do you touch your
smartphone?
o
Do you suffer from FOMO? Fear of missing out
o
What about FOBO? Fear of being offline
o
Nomophobia- the fear of being separated from
your smart phone!
o
Reflect on if your smart phone adds to your
stress or relieves it.
o
Make a list of all the positive things about the
digital world that you like
o
Make a list of all the negative things about the
digital world that you don’t like
- Work email on your personal device- is this a
good thing or not so good? Pros/cons; expectations?
-
Do you have personal boundaries for using your
device, social media, work email etc? It is important to make a list of
boundaries for yourself and then share it with your circle of people in your
life. Maybe even make a list of exceptions for certain situations. Identify
non-negotiable social norms. Be honest with friends, family, co-workers, on how
it makes you feel. Often times people are oblivious to how their behaviors may
affect other people.
- Practice a digital detox every now and then. Establish
offline times (for example, the phone is shut off during dinnertime, family
time, 2 hours before bed, during the night, etc.
- Reflect and make a list of what causes stress in
your life. What small changes can you make? How might you leverage your smart
device to assist?
With students (as we teach)
Be conscious and thoughtful of student challenges as they
try to balance work and life in a digital world. We identified a variety of
challenges
- Students sometimes have a hard time leveraging
technology to their advantage
-
Engagement
- Managing their time
-
Discerning fact from fiction; Finding and
choosing valid and reliable information,
-
Prioritizing their time
A few solutions on how we can encourage and assist students
to cut down on stress and balance better
-
Strive for achievement rather than perfection
- Assist with planning strategies- course
planners/milestones/tips for success
- Identify limitations and strategize how to
overcome
-
Reminders about support avenues
- Know your students! If you find that many of
your students are working moms or single parents formulate communities. One
suggestion was to have a social forum for easy meal planning, perhaps an
exchange of tips and ideas.
-
The balancing of work, family and school can be
challenging. We talked about tips for family such as (delegating, learn to say
no, establish boundaries etc.
-
Emphasize self-care
-
Celebrate successes and milestones
-
Remind students to “be true to yourself”
- Create student social communities (perhaps at a
program level) such as military family students, first generation students,
older adults 50+, single parents, working moms, etc.
-
Each term, ask your students to assemble a list
of what they need to do to be successful in the course. At the end of the term,
have the students revisit that list and reflect. If they were to share with the
next round of students what is the one thing they would advise for success. How
did they overcome challenges? SHARE these with the next round of incoming students
to your class. Testimonials go a long way. Especially if you have a particular
task in your course that you find time and after time no matter what you tell
them they just don’t grasp the purpose or meaning of why they are doing it. (of
course being clear about the purpose and expected outcomes (benefits) of the
assignment is critical)
What causes burnout among faculty? There are several things
that may impact this.
one stressor that we talked about: giving so much to each
individual student 24/7. Some solutions:
- Give students tools for success; guide them;
mentor them; DO NOT feel obligated to take on the responsibility to FIX the
problem.
- Create healthy boundaries for teaching.
Communicate this with your students.
-
When there are common questions/issues that
arise EVERY term consider getting assistance from your friendly instructional
designers at your campus to address solutions.
-
Create FAQs that become reusable each term.
·
One idea that was generated; enable advisors to
play a more active role in assisting students with challenges of school/ life
balance. Or within a program/department/ have one or two set mentors ready to
assist.
Leveraging digital overload to your
advantage (personally)
- Create a filtering and flagging system for your
email
-
7 Ways to Manage email so it doesn’t manage you!
-
Organize!
-
Use apps to help you organize and balance your
life
- IFTTT- If this than that, a macro script writer
for your smartphone. (ie. if mother in law calls send straight to voice mail;
Silence phone 2 hours before bedtime etc)
o
CamScanner- stop carrying around business cards,
receipts etc, take a quick pic and file it in Evernote.
- Create a personal dashboard (Google site or Evernote)
Mindfulness and Presence; Restoring Balance
and Joy in the Present Moment
Basic
mindfulness:
Pause
quietly in the present moment; Close your eyes; Become aware of senses- what do
you hear? Mentally scan body for sensations and whatever you might be feeling;
do this in a non-judgmentally. (unfortunately it is human nature to always want
to place judgement on everything, especially about ourselves, resist this urge
and begin to practice this new way of being present in the moment); practice
gratitude! You can start with simple things (ie. food, shelter, employment,
family, life, etc) “In this moment I can find joy, peace and calm.” Focus on
your breath if your mind becomes cluttered with thoughts
- Schedule guided meditations at certain times of
the day (or when you really need it).
- Build in mindfulness practices in your courses
for your students. Perhaps before an Exam or as the end of a course approaches.
- Mindfulness cultivates clarity.
-
Try mindful coloring! Calm your mind, reduce
stress and release your inner child. Research
backs this but honestly it is no-brainer. Just try it and see how it makes you
feel.
Stop, Breathe &
Think app is a simple tool to guide people of all ages and backgrounds
through meditations for mindfulness and compassion.
And of course, there’s YOGA!
Try it! Look for a local yoga center and give it a go. There are so
many different kinds of varieties of yoga. There’s more to yoga than downward
dog. It is a mindful practice that restores your life in more ways than you can
imagine.
Regis
friends and colleagues, you can attend weekly yoga right at our Coors-Life
fitness center.
or
Our
Healthy Living Coordinator, Linnea Bjorkman, will be teaching a free all-levels
bilingual yoga class. WHEN: Tuesdays TIME: 10:30a.m. LOCATION: Endorphin Yoga
Studio at 4995 Lowell Blvd., For more information contact Linnea Bjorkman:
lbjorkman@regis.edu or 303.458.3548
Don’t
want to practice in public? Don’t have time to go somewhere? Or maybe you just
want to squeeze in 15 minutes of yoga right from the comfort of your office. No
problem. There are TONs of resources out there on YouTube.
Here are some recommendations for office yoga
from Yoga Journal.
http://www.yogajournal.com/category/beginners/how-to/office-yoga/
And
YES there are apps for that too so you can practice a little yoga when you need
it for free!
Resources for a closer look at mindfulness:
Michel,
A., Bosch, C., & Rexroth, M. (2014).
Mindfulness
as a cognitive–emotional segmentation strategy: An intervention promoting work–life
balance.
Journal Of Occupational And Organizational Psychology,
87(4),
733-754. doi:10.1111/joop.12072
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/joop.12072/full
The Pursuit of Happiness; Bringing the
Science of Happiness to Life. Martin Seligman
