Emerging themes from the digital wellbeing community

Last week we held the second digital wellbeing community event in Wales. This community meets online three times a year on Microsoft Teams. The focus is to discuss practical ways we can support learners in Welsh FE to manage their digital lives and mitigate harmful practices. 

Rose, thorn, bud 

At the event, we used the ‘rose, thorn, bud’ method as a way of understanding and identifying wellbeing topics where we could focus our work. The approach has been used extensively in education to break down a topic into three key areas. 

A Rose involves a highlight, success, or something positive that’s happened. What have you done that you are most proud of? This starts the topic on a positive note. A Thorn allows participants to name a challenge, or something you need more support with. Identifying causes of difficulty is key to addressing the issue. What made it hard to be successful? Finally, a Bud gets people to think about their next steps and what they need to do to make improvements. What needs growth and nurturing? 

If you want to capture balanced feedback, I find this method helpful. Digital wellbeing tends to focus on negative practices, and it’s helpful to use a framework that provides opportunities to share positive practices, as well as highlight developing areas where we can rally our efforts into actions. 

Highlights and successes (roses) 

It’s always encouraging to have more successes than challenges. Digital wellbeing is a topic that we all struggle with to some degree, but there’s much we can learn from the existing good practices. 

Here are the key successes highlighted by participants from the community: 

Fostering relationships and collaboration 

• Internal Stakeholder Collaboration: Build partnerships with tutors and the Wellbeing Team to enhance integration of workshops with learner support services. 

• External Partnerships: Collaborate with external organisations, like TARIAN and Bullies Out, to broaden support networks for digital safety and wellbeing. 

• Consistency Across Educational Environments: Standardise approaches across colleges and further education institutions to improve the quality and uniformity of engagement. 

Staff and student development sessions 

• Critical Evaluation and AI Awareness: Practical workshops that include content on identifying scams, disinformation, and the ethical/responsible use of AI. 

• Student-Led Initiatives: Develop student ambassadors to advocate for digital wellbeing and online safety initiatives, empowering learners in paid roles to lead in these efforts. 

• Educational Programs on Digital Literacy: Embed into tutorial programmes online safety, identifying credible sources, addressing bias, and fostering awareness of digital addiction and risky online behaviours. 

Resource development and signposting 

• Sustained Messaging and Follow-Up: Continuous conversations beyond workshops ensure a longer-term impact on digital wellbeing and safety awareness. 

• Digital Wellbeing Resources and Tools: Signpost curated content, such as NHS digital wellbeing tips, time-management apps (Pomodoro), and RedDot365 to gather wellbeing data to inform specific intervention supports. 

Challenges (thorns) 

Wellbeing is a topic that resonates across a range of roles, departments, and organisations. Much of the discussion at the event focused on the need to revisit these themes as they evolve over time.

Here are the key challenges highlighted by participants from the community:

Fostering relationships and collaboration

• Overstretched Resources: Small and overstretched wellbeing teams struggle to manage multiple, competing priorities and develop long-term strategies.
• Teaching Staff Awareness: Limited time and capacity for teaching staff to address digital wellbeing issues with students.

Staff and student development sessions

• Ongoing Engagement: The importance of maintaining conversations and messaging beyond workshops to reinforce digital wellbeing.
• Staff Wellbeing and Fatigue: Staff experiencing “digital fatigue” and frustration, sometimes leading to a generational divide and misunderstandings about student behaviour.

Resource development and signposting

• Digital Addiction Awareness: Persistent issues with learner awareness of digital addiction and risky online behaviours, requiring constant attention.
• Rapid Tech Evolution: Difficulty in keeping up with fast-paced developments in IT and social media platforms, making proactive support for learners challenging.
• Social Media and Health: Sleep deprivation linked to social media use is affecting learners’ physical and mental health, impacting college attendance.
• Post-Pandemic Challenges: The impact of the COVID-19 lockdowns on young learners’ increased reliance and dependency on digital devices and social media.
• Privacy Concerns: A lack of awareness or concern among students about data privacy and the implications of sharing personal information online.

Emerging areas (buds)

Emerging areas of practice help us to align our support appropriately and ensure what we do is current and relevant to student needs. We identified the following themes as areas the community could work on together.

Here are the emerging areas highlighted by the participants from the community:

Fostering relationships and collaboration

• Online Safety Act: Keep up to date with relevant legislation, such as the Online Safety Act, and develop guidance accordingly (Jisc guidance on the OSA).
• Parental Digital Literacy Education: How can we empower parents/guardians with knowledge about digital literacy and the risks of overexposure to data for their children? How can we provide resources or support mechanisms for parents of college students to stay informed about digital safety?

Staff and student development sessions

• Gamification of Engagement: Develop game-based strategies to increase learner participation and make workshops more interactive and impactful (e.g. escape rooms).
• Digital Wellbeing Awareness for Staff: Encourage staff to adopt healthy digital practices and share insights to support colleagues and students (internal networks).
• Upskilling Staff in Digital Literacy: Offer training and resources to enhance staff competence in digital tools and strategies to better support student wellbeing.

Resource development and signposting

• Longitudinal Research on Societal Challenges: Exploring and analysing societal challenges over time, particularly around attention and focus, as highlighted in books like Stolen Focus.
• Exploration of Emerging Platforms: Raising awareness of trends in current platform use (e.g. shifts from X (formerly Twitter) to platforms like Bluesky).
• Positive Campaigns for Digital Tools and AI: Promote the benefits of AI and digital advancements while fostering a balanced narrative.
• Practical Techniques for Managing Anxiety: Raising awareness of techniques, such as the Havening technique, to address anxiety issues.
• Encouraging Offline Activities: Promote offline activities such as exercise and outdoor time to balance the impact of digital engagement.

The next community event will take place on the 10th April 2025.   Please get in touch with Catherine Evans  if you are part of a Wales FE institution and would like to join the community of practice.