In recent months, more and more campuses have announced they will reopen, but the dark shadow of mental health issues will extend into the fall semester and beyond.

We are now experiencing a rise in COVID cases around the country, but hope persists that science will eventually be successful in quelling this deadly virus. However, that does not mean that the consequences of the pandemic are over. For students at all levels, the mental health problems continue.

Anxiety, depression and suicides are lasting effects of the isolation, fear and loss generated by the disease. Loss extends far and wide. It includes the loss of those who have died and those who suffer long-haul COVID. Also included are the loss of months and years of social engagement, interpersonal relationships and confidence in creating new relationships. These losses can devastate lives of people in all age groups, but particularly in the fragile state of late adolescence and young adulthood. These deeply intense feelings and changes can have dire consequences on the lives of those who are affected.

While it is still very early to measure the impact of the pandemic on mental health, it is clear that there are severe ramifications. Analyzing data earlier this year, the Kaiser Family Foundation reported,

During the pandemic, about 4 in 10 adults in the U.S. have reported symptoms of anxiety or depressive disorder, a share that has been largely consistent, up from one in ten adults who reported these symptoms from January to June 2019 … During the pandemic, a larger than average share of young adults (ages 18-24) report symptoms of anxiety and/or depressive disorder (56%). Compared to all adults, young adults are more likely to report substance use (25% vs. 13%) and suicidal thoughts (26% vs. 11%). Prior to the pandemic, young adults were already at high risk of poor mental health and substance use disorder, though many did not receive treatment.

We are not getting back to normal. It will be a long time after the last COVID case is cured (if ever that occurs) before we can return to normal. The mental health damage will persist and even grow after the virus itself is vanquished. Even as the economy ramps back up and unemployment drops, the dark shadow of mental health damage expands. It has already had a tragic impact on college campuses.

The prestigious, rather small Dartmouth College campus in New Hampshire has suffered multiple deaths of freshmen since the beginning of the pandemic, write Soleil Gaylord and Arielle Feuerstein in The Dartmouth: “The deaths of four undergraduate students — three of which were by suicide, according to reporting from The Dartmouth and the Boston Globe — brought widespread grief and sorrow to the campus community.” Gaylord and Feuerstein note the complexities of providing services. In some cases, mental health care is denied to distant students because of their home-state laws that prohibit remote counseling.

The phenomenon of “suicide contagion” is an insidious aspect of the mental health crisis we face. Kate Hidalgo Bellows reports in The Chronicle of Higher Education that evidence is accumulating of related clusters of suicides on campuses:

Clusters of suicides — multiple deaths in close proximity — have raised concerns of “suicide contagion” on campuses. Research has shown that exposure to suicide can increase suicidal behavior in others, especially those who are already at risk. “It can happen at small places like Dartmouth [or] big places like the University of Washington,” said Kevin Kruger, president of NASPA: Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education. “They’re even more tragic when you have a series of deaths like this because it really affects the community. Every institution ought to look at the root causes of this. We know that mental-health issues are a significant challenge.”

It is so much easier to diagnose COVID than it is to identify and diagnose mental health damage. There are no quick saliva tests for paranoia, depression, loneliness and associated disorders. Even in the early stages, those afflicted may not even recognize the signs of depression. Yet the end result is just as devastating: long-term disability or even death.

For distant online students and those who cannot come to a mental health center, the professionals are somewhat hampered in making diagnoses and delivering counsel. Elon University counselor Mark Eades says, “Virtual counseling is beneficial because it saves the commute time for students, but it makes it more difficult for the counselor to read the student’s body language. Some of our training when we’re becoming therapists is to not just listen to words, but also to see what the person’s entire person is telling you. It’s hard to really see if a person is sort of slumped or they might be saying one thing or showing something different.”

Princeton University dean of the college Jill Dolan recommended earlier this year that faculty consider easing workloads and take into account student mental health for the end of the semester. “We have to figure out how to acknowledge our common humanity while also maintaining our rigorous expectations,” she continued. “And that’s something that, pandemic aside, I think all of us very much want to do.”

The need for understanding, flexibility and broad perspectives will continue for semesters and years to come. Lives have been altered. There will be no “return to normal” for many students, staff, faculty and administrators. How are you personally incorporating this perspective into your work? How are you leading and encouraging colleagues at your institution to take a holistic view of the student into account as standards and outcomes are crafted?

This article was originally published in Inside Higher Ed’s Transforming Teaching & Learning blog. 

In this 21st century, technologies are changing the landscape of industry and society at a rate not previously documented. Are our courses keeping up?

I recall teaching communication technology classes in 1972 on the Urbana campus of the University of Illinois. We felt as though the world was changing rapidly enough. Students were standing in line to punch out computer cards to run FORTRAN 66 programs. However, the Arpanet, the predecessor of the internet, was just in very early development stages, and the World Wide Web was two decades in the future. The essential rich communication and collaboration tools through which so many advances have since been leveraged had not yet been deployed. Artificial intelligence was science fiction. In those lazy days of change, one might be able to get away with using a course syllabus or a textbook two years in a row!

In most fields that kind of slow rollout is not the case today. Advances are not measured decade by decade. “State of the art” is changing month by month in many fields. Not only are technologies changing, but applications are proliferating, industries are emerging, new consumer markets are sprouting and the road map for the future is clear only for the near term.

Our learners may be one, two or three years away from entering, or re-entering, the workforce. We must make every effort to ensure that our teaching will still be relevant those few years ahead. Yet I fear that far too many of our colleagues are using the same texts, the same syllabi, and sharing the same — now stale — facts in their classes with not enough attention to the changes that technologies and social shifts are making in their field. Granted, the rate of change in Greek history and foreign language may not be as rapid as other areas, but their social context, relevance to today’s society and to the near future are surely changing as rapidly as is society as a whole.

As faculty members, we are called upon to understand not only our discipline, but also the broader context in which our course content is applied not only today, but more importantly in the years to come. If we teach a course based on today’s use of information, that will likely be years out of date when the learner is in a position to meaningfully apply the course content. Dated knowledge is a terrible disservice to our learners, our colleagues and the reputation of our program and university.

The speed of textbook publishing has not improved much over the years. Writer’s Digest suggests:

With our rules established above, the typical time it takes for a writer to go from book contract to publication is usually somewhere in the nine months to two years area. Many factors come into play for this range of outcomes, including the size of the press and how far out they plan their production schedule.

Depending upon timing alignment with academic term start dates and distribution, it may well take longer to reach the students. And the next edition may be even more years away.

So, how can we ensure our students are given information and insights that will be timely and relevant when they commence their careers? How can we teach our courses through the windshield, looking forward, rather than through the rearview mirror?

The key is to turn to current materials to keep your classes up-to-date. Open educational resources are proliferating, not only in formal OER texts, but in open research journals, government databases and publicly shared reports. The turnaround time for OER publications is nearly instant depending upon the format desired and the level of peer review used.

Myths surrounding the efficacy of OER are many. In a blog post from TAA Abstract, “Top 9 Myths About OER Publishing,” several leading scholars in the field clarify the misperceived obstacles to publication and use of OER in offering timely materials for classes. The quality of the materials is equal to or better in many cases than those acquired from traditional publishers. The flexibility, relevance and timeliness of OER materials extend far beyond their low cost.

As we enter the fourth Industrial Revolution, we will see technologies changing the workforce, creating new fields, outdating some career paths while creating new ones and shifting society in ways we have yet to imagine. The increasing rate of change shows no signs of abating. Increasingly, we are under pressure as educators to ensure that what we teach is not outdated. We must not be teaching for jobs and career paths that are dwindling away to the dustbin of history. It is incumbent on us to perform the due diligence to assure that what we are teaching will be more relevant tomorrow than yesterday.

Are you and your colleagues teaching through the windshield or the rearview mirror? What steps are you taking to bring new materials and fresh experiences to your classes? Will your teaching hold up through five years? Who is leading the charge to make your curriculum relevant to tomorrow?

This article was originally published in Inside Higher Ed’s Transforming Teaching and Learning blog.