Promoting communal care for wellbeing in graduate education: Community building, belonging, and navigating the COVID-19 pandemic

Academia is a stressful occupation. Globally, faculty report stressors related to mounting expectations for research and scholarly productivity in the context of simultaneously increasing instructional workloads, administrative duties, and student expectations. As a result of these increased demands and expectations, faculty report experiences of intense stress, worry, depressed mood, emotional exhaustion, diminished self-care, and overall sense of compromised wellbeing. This chapter explores self-care within graduate education and argue for the inclusion of communal care practices to support wellbeing. It positions community building as a communal care practice that extends traditional notions of self-care. It also adopts reflexive ethnography to unpack the subjective experiences of wellbeing, including those incurred during the COVID-19 pandemic. The chapter utilizes Bronfenbrenner's (1994) ecological theory of human development to deconstruct the sense of belonging and efforts to build community within academia, reflecting on resulting impacts on wellbeing. It identifies microsystem, mesosystem, exosystem, macrosystem, and chronosystem factors that facilitated or impeded the efforts to build community in context of the social-cultural locations as faculty. The chapter highlights the importance of modeling self-care through community building in graduate-level practice, scholarship, and policy. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)

Creative arts intervention to reduce burnout and decrease psychological distress in healthcare professionals: A qualitative analysis

Creative arts therapy (CAT) can potentially mitigate the unprecedented levels of healthcare professional (HCP) burnout that have been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. However, empirical evidence about the impact of CAT programs is lacking. We conducted focus groups with HCPs (N = 20) who participated in a 12-week CAT clinical trial to enhance the understanding of the effectiveness of the intervention. For HCPs experiencing burnout and psychological distress, our CAT program supported healing and resiliency through building a sense of community. Participants reported that several programmatic components contributed to this sense of community including: 1) diversity of participants' disciplines, roles, and geographic locations;2) physical separation between the conduct of the CAT program and their primary place of employment;3) facilitator skill;4) collectively contributing to a group project;and 5) being pushed out of their "comfort zone" through the creative activity. Although participants described the particular need for the CAT program in light of additional stressors induced by the COVID-19 pandemic, they believed that this program would have been beneficial pre-pandemic and in the future. To build long-term resiliency, participants suggested that CAT interventions should continue after the 12-week program.Copyright © 2023 Elsevier Ltd

That Birdie Feeling: Understanding the Role of LAN Organizers in Maintaining a Gaming Community

This paper presents the initial findings of a longitudinal study examining the role and experiences of LAN organizers in managing player communities pre, during and post the Covid 19 pandemic. Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis was used to analyze interviews with organizers of the Birdie LAN, Sweden's longest running LAN event. Five key themes were identified reflecting the roles of organizers and their experiences pre pandemic. (1) building and maintaining the culture, (2) encouraging inclusivity and community building, (3) negotiating professionalism, (4) learning, adapting and evolving, (5) creating sustainability through a future orientation. This paper presents the results of the first data collection to examine the impacts of the pandemic on grassroots gaming communities. The findings here represent a foundation in understanding the role of community leaders in maintaining a culture around gaming. These initial findings add value to our understanding of grassroots esports and player communities and the social practices of gaming in the modern era. © 2023 IEEE Computer Society. All rights reserved.

Setting a New Stage: Small Scale as a Way Forward

A quiet revolution is taking place and may increase in force based on the Covid-19 pandemic, as we need to address some wicked problems: the pandemic's economic consequences alongside the climate and environmental crisis. Based on concrete examples from around the world with a renewed focus on fibres' environmental footprint and local variation as opposed to industrial farming and mass production, this chapter will highlight some new paths. The examples will be from a varied pool and will mainly be actors working with wool. On the list, we find Fibershed, research projects and private initiatives that represent a counter-movement of people leaving behind well-paid jobs in urban areas to pursue small-scale and community-building enterprises based on local fibre resources, as well as building rural–urban hubs that galvanise the best of both worlds. © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022, corrected publication 2022.

Intergenerational Integration in Community Building to Improve the Mental Health of Residents-A Case Study of Public Space.

This study defined intergenerational integration in communities at a theoretical level and verified whether a series of measures could facilitate negotiation and communication between community residents and other stakeholders to generate a positive and healthy community environment and gradually improve intergroup relations. Specifically, we applied community psychology and used Hongqiao New Village in Shanghai, China, as a research site to explore intergenerational conflict in public community spaces. The research was divided into two stages: an input stage and an output stage. In the input stage, participatory research and tea parties were used to deeply explore residents' public space requirements. In the output stage, we tested the validity of the theory by using the Intergenerational Attitude Scale to investigate whether the intergenerational relationships were changed by the co-creation intervention. The results showed that the intervention caused a decrease in the incidence of conflict between residents using the square and caused some children to join the older groups in their activities. We thus propose a theoretical system model of intergenerational integration strategies that incorporates elements of integration, disagreement, and synergy in intergenerational interactions. Overall, this paper provides new ideas for building a community environment that supports mental health and improves intergenerational relationships and social well-being.

Community centres in increasingly diverse neighbourhoods: policies and practices of community building in post-war housing estates in Switzerland

This paper uses research conducted in Swiss post-war high-rise estates to focus on policies and practices of community building in neighbourhoods with an increasingly diverse population. Initially, the estates were mainly populated by Swiss and Southern European lower to middle income families, but latterly the household structures have become very heterogeneous with residents coming from all over the world. The planning and development policies of the estates are based on specific ideas about creating a community, which are still evident in the building and management of community centres but also in various facilities for common use (playgrounds, football and sport fields, community rooms and kitchens, libraries, petting zoos, cafés, crafts rooms, etc.). The community centres, along with community work, are key to encouraging encounters, connecting people and activating cultural life in the neighbourhoods and have played a pioneering role far beyond the boundaries of their respective estates. However, individualisation and pluralisation processes, the aging of the facilities and built structures, and economic pressures pose challenges for the community centres. The current Covid-19 crisis reinforces these challenges by limiting and impeding cultural activities and direct (physical) social encounters. The paper analyses the potential and the challenges of community building in the context of growing diversity among residents, and acknowledges what we can learn from these experiences when thinking about creating and strengthening communities in a multi-faceted world today. Copyright © 2022 (Althaus, E., Christensen, L.)

From technology to community: the role of artefacts in teaching and learning during and beyond pandemic times

This article explores lecturers' experience of adapting, shaping and transforming teaching and learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. The study focuses on understanding the challenges and opportunities that are afforded by pandemic-induced changes in terms of digital teaching and learning and their post-pandemic implications. Empirical data were collected through 16 semi-structured interviews with teaching staff at a Norwegian university. The article draws on Max W. Wartofsky's work on artefacts, and uses the categorisation of primary, secondary and tertiary artefacts as a theoretical lens. The data indicates that designing and delivering courses that combine online and in-site teaching is a complex process requiring flexibility and creativity, which needs to be acknowledged by management and budget-allocating entities. Career development is an incentive to invest time in developing digital teaching. Finally, building a community of peers can support course quality and the professional welfare of the teaching staff.

The Power of Synchronous Sessions in Distance Education: Building Community and Resilience in the Age of COVID-19

We draw on Bourdieu's work on the sociology of education and introduce the idea of building social capital and community in the often-misunderstood, one-sided narrative of online learning, which is seen both as an isolated and isolating experience. We also look at educational praxis, which is "informed, committed action,” to address socially differentiated educational attainment—perceived to be more pronounced in online learning. To this end, we think that the field of distance education would benefit from a discussion of the significant value gained from adding synchronous sessions to online courses that are otherwise asynchronous, particularly for teaching research-based and analytical subjects at the graduate level. To investigate this, we perform a narrative analysis of qualitative data from student evaluations of five online courses taught within the past two years where we introduced regular synchronous sessions. Our findings indicate that synchronous sessions, especially during the pandemic, were perceived by students as cornerstone of a pedagogy of care. Further, these sessions work better than fully asynchronous courses for students who are prone to lower educational attainment due to prior conditions (e.g., SES, race) because of the added layer of support. Finally, our findings indicate that these sessions represent one, effective way for students to build social capital and community in courses that are otherwise fully asynchronous. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

Plan for a Turbulent Future: Your Roadmap to Personal Resilience for a Changing Climate

Millions of lives and business have either been lost or significantly impacted by COVID-19. Yet, many are warning that climate change will be much more devastating over the coming decades. Reality is starting to set in. We are not going to achieve our global mitigation targets;we probably won't even come close. Individuals faced with this reality react differently, from willful ignorance to anxiety and depression, all normal reactions. If you believe in science and understand the likelihood of our failure to meet our targets, you need to accept and plan for an unknown, challenging future. We may be individually powerless to stop climate change, but we certainly can act in ways that will help us better face the consequences. This book provides a structured approach to plan and prepare today for a world rocked by a turbulent climate. © 2022 River Publishers.

Integrative Wellness Approaches to Mitigate Perceived Stress, Increase Vitality, and Build Community during COVID-19: A Pilot Study.

INTRODUCTION: In January 2020, a small, private school of nursing in a university in the pacific northwest, established the Initiative for Vital Practice (I4VP). The I4VP's primary goal was to create a sustainable pathway for increasing vital practice through increasing resiliency and self-care practices. OBJECTIVES: The ensuing pathway's objectives were to, (1) take previously identified factors related to perceived stress related to workloads, impacts on professional quality of life and psychosocial exposures during the COVID-19 pandemic; and (2) develop and pilot test a wellness intervention (i.e., wellness pods) for faculty and staff to build community and find new ways to enhance well-being through peer support. METHODS: Five focused Wellness Pods were developed on Microsoft Teams platform using the individual channels: (1) stress and mind-body exploration pod; (2) mindfulness in healthcare pod; (3) healing relationship pod; (4) environmental pod; and (5) physical activity pod. Faculty and staff self-selected into a Wellness Pod that interested them. The Wellness Pods met weekly in person over a period of two months. Quantitative and qualitative data was collected via cross-sectional surveys including: four sociodemographic items, one item on current stress level, one write-in item on current stress management at work, two write-in items focused on the cognitive reasoning for participation, the 7-item subjective vitality scale focused individual difference, the 7-item subjective vitality scale focused on the state level, the 10-item perceived stress scale, and one item ranking which wellness pod the individual wanted to participate in. There was one trained facilitator for the overall Wellness Pods operations and communication. RESULTS: The average score on the perceived stress scale was 22.3 (SD = 3.5), indicating moderate levels of perceived stress. The average score on the individual difference vitality score was 26.5 (SD = 7.6), whereas the state level vitality score was 21.4 (SD = 9.98), indicating moderate levels of subjective vitality. Two categories: stress management and wellness pods, were identified through content analysis. CONCLUSIONS: Through pilot testing, this project demonstrated feasibility for future wellness pods interventions for faculty and staff at schools of nursing. Future research is needed to evaluate the effectiveness of the wellness pods intervention.

Research avenues for amplifying Indigenous radio

In this article, I discuss Indigenous radio's ongoing importance for tribal communities in the US from my perspective as a settler scholar, drawing on multifaceted research into Indigenous radio's programme content and production practices before and during the pandemic. For this research, 'Indigenous radio' refers to radio produced, managed, presented and/ or owned by tribal communities. Other terms in use to describe Indigenous radio include Native American, Indian, or tribal radio, demonstrating that there is not a single universalising term and reflecting a diversity in tribal cultures, languages and practices more generally. Building on this understanding of the inherent diversity of Indigenous radio, I describe the ways in which my overarching research project investigates Indigenous radio holistically, via critical outputs combining a literature review of Indigenous theoretical approaches, an online interactive map of tribal stations and in-depth case studies of tribal stations. Through these, I explore community-building practices of Indigenous radio as produced through what Indigenous theorists Glen Coulthard and Leanne Betasamosake Simpson (2016) term grounded normativity. Building on this avenue of exploration, I suggest the place-based values embedded in Indigenous radio production practices and content can function as everyday acts of resurgence, following Jeff Corntassel's (2012) conceptualisation of ways in which Indigenous resurgence can reinforce a project of decolonisation. To exemplify and situate these arguments, I draw on examples of radio production and practitioner insights from selected tribal stations embodying diverse tribal production practices and content, before turning to focus on pandemic practices in Indigenous radio. When the pandemic emerged, my research focus necessarily widened to include and examine COVID-related practices and programming in tribal radio, enabling reflection on these in the context of a paradigm shift in which the value of tribal radio's community-building work has become acute. © 2022 Moylan K.

Post-COVID-19 Consumers’ Cautious and Virtuous Mindsets: New Marketing Opportunities for Positive Social Change

Amidst the 2019/22 COVID-19 miseries, a silver lining appears: the pandemic is causing many of us rethink our lives. Using terror management theory (TMT), this conceptual essay identifies the simultaneous emergence of two mindsets, a cautious mindset, stemming from the preservation motive, and a "virtuous" mindset, stemming from an enrichment motive-an intentionality to live a more fulfilling life. These two mindsets in turn produce five life perspectives-life themes for everyday living and achieving long-term life goals. This study reviews evidence of these five life perspectives in published reports of consumers' thoughts during the pandemic. In turn, these emergent life perspectives and consumer motives present new opportunities for marketers to advance consumer well-being and positive social change as developed in this paper. Weaving a nexus of consumers' emergent life perspectives, consumption motives, and marketer opportunities, our conceptual framework suggests seven research questions for marketing scholars.

Rethinking Authentic Assessments - A Peer-Assessed Virtual Conference for Online Collaborative Learning

The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated the teaching challenges of engaging students, building a learning community, and creating enriching learning experiences. Here, we present an authentic, asynchronous assessment method applied as a peer-assessed virtual conference task. The peer assessment and facilitation effectively generated a strong sense of community and teamwork (95% agreement) and enabled the students to generate a deeper understanding of the course content (73% agreement) by fostering critical self-reflection (87% agreement). Student engagement excelled whereby many choose to engage in additional presentations outside of their allocated peer markings. Consistently positive feedback highlighted the task's utility as an online learning tool and its efficacy in shaping a collaborative class community besides remote teaching condition. Additionally, the multi-faceted nature of the assessment promoted a broad range of effective teaching qualities, including collaboration, communication, and application of theory in innovative contexts which lends itself to higher education. Overall, the virtual conference tool and its peer-based facilitation can be considered for effective engineering education practice, which may also apply to other scientific disciplines to improve student learning and experiences.

Regional Collaborations Supporting Cyberinfrastructure-Enabled Research During a Pandemic: The Structure and Support Plan of the SWEETER CyberTeam

CyberInfrastructure enthusiasts in the South West United States collaborated to form the National Science Foundation CC∗- funded SWEETER CyberTeam. SWEETER offers CI support to foster research collaborations at several minority serving institutions in Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona. Its training programs and student mentorship have supported participants, with several taking CI professional positions at research computing facilities. In this paper, we discuss the structure of the CyberTeam and the impact of the COVID 19 pandemic on its activities. The SWEETER CyberTeam has a hub-and-spoke structure that adopted a federated approach to ensure that each site maintained its own identity and was able to leverage local programs. It took a "boots on the ground"approach that ensured that services were up and running in a short period of time. To ensure adequate coverage of all fields of science, the project adopted an inclusive fractional service approach that leveraged expertise at the participating sites. The Cyberteam has organized several workshops, hackathons, and training events. Team members have participated in completions and several follow-on programs have been funded. We present the achievements and learnings from this effort and discuss efforts to make it sustainable. © 2022 Owner/Author.

Comparing Techniques for Building Community and Promoting Inclusion in a Virtual Engineering Classroom

This is an innovative practice Full Paper. The COVID-19 pandemic forced virtually all education to operate remotely and faculty and students not typically accustomed to an online format had to quickly come up to speed in learning best-practices to teach and learn online. Engineering education research in the early days of the pandemic quickly revealed that building community and promoting inclusion in the classroom were key to promoting student success. However, in an emergency remote teaching environment where students are spread out and isolated from each other, building community can be more challenging. This paper studies student preferences (through student survey feedback) on community building and inclusion techniques by comparing three instructors' use of different techniques when teaching a common undergraduate engineering course.

Nurturing urban innovation and knowledge in the ongoing COVID-19 world

Amidst the catastrophe of COVID-19, segments of the population globally experienced changes in their perspectives on life and the desire to live a more fulfilling life. The study here examines this emergent trend with secondary data available as published survey reports and personal observations using the inductive-reflective method of understanding and theorizing. The findings support the identification of five facets of this new mindset, namely, rise in altruism, growing community-mindedness, increasing focus on health and financial security, searching for work-life balance, and increasing experiences with nature. To channel this emergent mindset, this study proposes five categories of urban innovations: (1) revival of neighborhoods;(2) expansion of parks and nature;(3) investment in urban transportation and greenspaces, (4) incentivizing entrepreneurs for ecology and local “maker economy,” and (5) staging community projects for collective good. The study describes the benefits of these innovations to general population and set an agenda for urban planners, city managers, and social agencies as citizens begin their ongoing COVID lives. The study closes by advancing ten research proposals for future social science contributions in innovation and knowledge

Online Learning Acceptance Model during Covid-19: An Integrated Conceptual Model

Because of Covid-19, many countries shutdown schools in order to prevent spreading the virus in their communities. Therefore, schools have opted to use online learning technologies that support distance learning for students. As consequences, Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research encourages higher education institutes to adopt blended learning in their programs. However, different students react in different ways to online learning. Some students were able to make productive use of online learning strategies more than others. A conceptual model based on 15 variables was constructed based on UTAUT2, TAM, and other models to investigate and to study the factors that affect students’ acceptance of online learning. 29 hypotheses were investigated to study the relationships among the variables that affect online learning acceptance and online learning community building in Al-Ahliyya Amman University. The collected responses were analyzed using a structural equation modeling (SEM) approach. SPSS and AMOS were used to analyze the data.

Building Confianza: Collective Public History in the Time of Distance – a Joint Reflection from the Boyle Heights Museum Team: The Journal of the Historical Association

How do you preserve the history of a neighbourhood undergoing change? How do you honour its residents and their legacy of lucha (struggle)? How do you uplift the voices of community members, students and researchers of colour in the museum world? In this joint reflection, members of the Los Angeles Boyle Heights Museum (BHM) reflect on their collaborative endeavours to research, preserve and celebrate the multi‐ethnic history of this Los Angeles (LA) neighbourhood. As a research, exhibition and educational project led by professors, graduate students, undergraduate students and community members, the BHM team uses a horizontal leadership model to uplift and tell the stories of a neighbourhood. The BHM team members discuss the various approaches they use to build confianza – trust – among themselves and within US Latinx migrant communities. By centring confianza as both a method and a theoretical framework for public history work, the team demonstrates how it builds a more inclusive, family‐centred and intergenerational museum experience. Through building confianza, the team has been able to pivot their work to address and manoeuvre new challenges during the Covid‐19 pandemic.

Building Confianza: Collective Public History in the Time of Distance - a Joint Reflection from the Boyle Heights Museum Team

How do you preserve the history of a neighbourhood undergoing change? How do you honour its residents and their legacy of lucha (struggle)? How do you uplift the voices of community members, students and researchers of colour in the museum world? In this joint reflection, members of the Los Angeles Boyle Heights Museum (BHM) reflect on their collaborative endeavours to research, preserve and celebrate the multi-ethnic history of this Los Angeles (LA) neighbourhood. As a research, exhibition and educational project led by professors, graduate students, undergraduate students and community members, the BHM team uses a horizontal leadership model to uplift and tell the stories of a neighbourhood. The BHM team members discuss the various approaches they use to build confianza - trust - among themselves and within US Latinx immigrant communities. By centring confianza as both a method and a theoretical framework for public history work, the team demonstrates how it builds a more inclusive, family-centred and intergenerational museum experience. Through building confianza, the team has been able to pivot their work to address and manoeuvre new challenges during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Lessons Learned During a Global Pandemic: Teaching Takeaways

Over the past year, the global pandemic caused by Covid-19 challenged educators from around the world to almost instantaneously become experts in online teaching and learning. While these challenges were often intense, frustrating, and very time-consuming, faculty from institutions of higher learning stepped up to the plate. As all courses ranging from A-Z across all levels of undergraduate and graduate studies went online and faculty scrambled to revise syllabi and reframe learning outcomes, many lessons were learned. As we prepare to potentially resume face-to-face teaching very soon, it may be prudent to pause and ask ourselves the following question: What has worked or is working in the online teaching and learning environment? The primary goal of this paper is to shed some light on the lessons that we learned – both the good and the bad. A secondary goal is to take the positive experiences and reshape them into longer-term teaching takeaways. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.