Associate Dean (WIL-Clinical Education), Health and Biomedical Sciences
During times of crisis, it's helpful to have a purpose and an anchor, and this is exactly what happened with Associate Professor Sophia Xenos' work during the recent COVID-19 lockdown.
BHI ECP Director, Magdalena Plebanski encouraged key BHI members to form a working group to support students' wellbeing during the time of crisis. The group met fortnightly to find creative ways to identify projects around mental health and students' wellbeing. A/Professor Xenos described how these meetings became a "creative outlet in amongst all the other challenges we were experiencing” and that “it was a welcome challenge to identify practical and immediate ways to assist students by collecting resources around mental health”.
The cross-disciplinary group of staff and students from psychology and education demonstrated their leadership in two initiatives aimed at improving the mental health of students in the context of current government initiatives. One of these initiatives was a series of 20-minute interactive webinars designed by students to support student mental health. In the webinars, students discussed issues such as loneliness, social media, and coping with COVID and shared strategies for how to manage challenging situations. Students were then assessed on these webinars as part of their respective course assessment.
The webinars were linked to the RMIT Health and Wellbeing Facebook page that was established for RMIT students during COVID-19. The three webinars are now available on Facebook for thousands of students to access.
