Studies estimate that over half of U.S. adults experience some sort of trauma before the age of 18, with higher occurrences for marginalized populations (CDC, 2021). These numbers indicate that many of our students have incurred some level of trauma that continues to impact their learning. Most likely, you feel overwhelmed and unprepared to address these issues in the classroom. However, employing Gunderson et al.’s (2023) checklist tool can serve as a good way to start in creating a “safer, trigger-free, trauma-informed learning” environment in a traditional, hybrid, or online course (82). 

Gunderson et al. (2023) notes that faculty can empower their students to have more agency over their own learning by adding in class options and pathways to express themselves; collectively these aspects can help students set “boundaries and meet their own learning needs while working through their trauma” (82). Starting out by making small changes in your practice and, over time, building in additional practices can help you create a strong foundation that recognizes, responds to, and improves the learning environment for all students.    

Building a Trauma-informed Classroom 

Emotional and behavioral outcomes of traumatic events can reveal themselves in several ways: for example, inability to focus, poor attendance, low motivation, struggle to learn new things, anxiety, depression, and/or physical pain such as migraines (Gunderson et al, 2023; Hoch et al, 2015).  To address student needs in a course, Gunderson et al. used the Center for Disease Control’s six principles to create a safe and supportive environment to create a checklist grounded in evidence-based instructional design and teaching practices. The checklist addresses some very basic steps in areas that you are familiar with, such as course design, digital tools, and community building; however, the checklist also includes more detailed, comprehensive strategies that can expand your pedagogical approach across all phases of the course.  

Course Design 

Creating an intentional learning environment starts with small actions that can make a difference, such as adding a trauma statement to a syllabus. Faculty can personalize a trauma statement by emphasizing awareness and open communication. For example, 

As a student, you may experience a range of challenges that can interfere with learning, such as stressful life events, experiences of anxiety and/or depression, self-harm, substance use, and/or unusual difficulty with ordinary life activities. The increased stress of school can also make existing mental health struggles more difficult to manage. If what you are experiencing is affecting your course work, please speak with me. (University of North Carolina at Asheville’s Syllabi Statements, n.d. )

Other course design aspects Gunderson’s checklist mentions include the following: 

• Choose content that does not minimize or romanticize trauma.  
• Provide options for readings, roles, and assignments.
• Give trigger warnings for some topics, content, or discussions. 
• Build a supportive community with opportunities to collaborate, provide feedback, and practice with low/-no stakes assignments. 

Digital Practices 

The checklist also pinpoints approaches to make digital spaces more trauma-informed as well. You may already poll students and enable them to vote anonymously; carry this over into other areas as well, such as letting your students post or annotate anonymously or create avatars to facilitate their ability to communicate. Other suggestions on the checklist lend themselves to shifting passive learning to active (Gunderson et al., 2023). 

• Creating classroom community agreements to facilitate collaborative work. 
• Posting options: text, audio, video. 
• Allow students to choose virtual backgrounds or personalize their workspaces. 
• Unlimited attempts to re-record themselves for podcasts/audio tasks.
• Use their own trigger warnings in posts.

Community Building  

Building and sustaining a community that enables all students to participate and learn is challenging; however, adding components centered on course interactions will not not only help students who have experienced trauma, but all students. A good first step to start the semester entails having students help you develop course goals and objectives about effective interaction and communication in the course. Co-creating protocol focused on communication and interaction can not only establish boundaries but it can also facilitate the following:  

• Effective peer communication and feedback. 
• Create space for marginalized students to contribute 
• Promote effective collaboration
• Encourage co-teaching and peer-to-peer communication and teaching

A commonly held misconception is that students’ trauma responses will increase when they encounter related experiences or topics so avoiding trauma-related topics in the classroom is best practices; however, it is quite the opposite if educators manage communications properly (Gunderson et al,, 2023).  Implementing trauma-informed checklist items is a good way to start rethinking your course because even small changes can prove invaluable to your students and their learning processes at Oakland University. 

References and Resources 

Gunderson, R. L., et al., (2023). An instructor's guide for implementing trauma-informed pedagogy in higher education. The Journal of Faculty Development, 37(2), 80-86. 

Hoch, A. et al., (2015, May). Trauma-informed care on a college campus. Presentation at the annual meeting of the American College Health Association, Orlando, Fl. 

University of North Carolina at Asheville (n.d.) Syllabi statements about mental health and trigger warnings.

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About the Author

Written by Rachel Smydra, Faculty Fellow for the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning at Oakland University. Photo by Lucas George Wendt on Unsplash. Others may share and adapt under Creative Commons License CC BY-NC.

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With changing enrollment trends, you may want to consider going the extra step to fill your courses by actually promoting them to students. Even though efforts at the college and department levels are key, you can be more proactive at the individual level to inform students which courses you will teach in upcoming semesters. Piquing their interest using a variety of channels may boost or maintain student enrollment in your sections. 

Promoting your classes, especially new courses, can give you a chance to engage with students and explain what your courses will cover and why they will be invaluable in helping students accrue knowledge and build skills. I have had many students enroll in more than one of my courses after receiving my upcoming course lists and/or hearing me discuss my courses.

Strategies to Promote Your Classes 

Although the methods below are not exhaustive, they do have one characteristic in common: taking active steps as a course instructor to inform students about your upcoming courses.

• Announce a list of your upcoming courses: I send a Moodle announcement to my students every semester to let them know which Gen Eds and electives I will offer in upcoming semesters. The list provides the following information for each course: title and CRN, course modality, meeting times, Gen Ed attributes (if any), and a catchy description of the course. 
• Use a follow-up discussion to highlight your upcoming courses in class: After I send a list of upcoming Gen Eds and electives, I take a few minutes in class to discuss the courses, how they differ from the course(s) students are currently taking with me, and why I think they are worth taking. 
• Mention relevant upcoming courses to individual students: I chat with each of my students individually after class through an activity I call Chat With Your Professor. During these chats, students typically tell me about their academic interests. If the conversation reveals that a student has interests that align with material in one of my upcoming Gen Eds or electives, I suggest the student take it, and I explain why it would be beneficial. Students are then aware that my course is a suitable option for them, and it is on their radar screen when they register for courses.
• Suggest other courses if your course is canceled: Many of us have had Gen Eds and electives canceled due to low enrollments. I view the students in those courses as a potential audience for other courses I am offering that semester. I contact each student in the canceled course and let them know what other Gen Eds and electives I am teaching that semester. I send each student the same information about the courses that I had in my upcoming course list.
• Advertise your courses with a banner at the Oakland Center: We’ve all seen the colorful banners at the Oakland Center advertising activities at the university. You can also use these banners to advertise your courses. You will need to design the banner and have it printed. For information, see Advertising: Banners and A-Frames at the Office for Student Involvement (OSI) website. 
• Post fliers for your courses on bulletin boards around campus: You can take the same design that you use for a banner and print it out as a flier to post around campus on OSI-approved bulletin boards. Note that fliers must be approved and stamped. See Bulletin Board Postings at the OSI website for information.

Related Teaching Tips

Chat with Your Professor
Helena’s 10-minute Teaching Talk

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About the Author

Helena Riha teaches Linguistics and International Studies. She has taught over 3,400 students at OU in 17 different courses. Helena is the 2023 winner of the OU Online Teaching Excellence Award and the 2016 winner of the OU Excellence in Teaching Award. This is her fifteenth teaching tip. Outside of the classroom, Helena enjoys supporting her middle schooler in Scouts BSA activities.

Edited by Rachel Smydra, Faculty Fellow for the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning at Oakland University. Image by Fabio Bracht. Others may share and adapt under Creative Commons License CC BY-NC.

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Focusing on the start of the semester is important but so too is how you end the  semester. Faculty and students always find the final weeks to be a busy time but embedding ways for students to reflect on what they learned, engage one last time as a group, and say good-bye can help bring closure to the time you spent together.

Whichever activities you choose, from presentation to party, considering the following strategies may help guide you in your planning to meet students’ needs: 

• Offering emotional and psychological closure 
• Creating opportunities to summarize or present what they learned 
• Providing motivation and confidence to build on the knowledge and skills they accrued
• Extending invitations to reach out if they need help, support, or guidance in the future (Eggleston and Smith, 2022) 

In this teaching tip, two OU faculty share how they end their semesters.

Activities/Classroom Connections

Taking time to decide how you want to wrap it up most likely depends on the courses you teach, but using certain strategies can help you part ways with your students (Eggleston & Smith, 2022; Forunier, 2019; Hardy, 2021). 

Using a project showcase page to facilitate final project presentations in online courses

Mark Isken, Associate Professor of Management Information Systems

I teach upper level / graduate courses in business analytics. My courses have always ended with a pretty open-ended final project. Students are encouraged to view this as an opportunity to explore some technical topic (related to the course) that interests them and that they'd like to learn more about. I give them some broad ideas for types of projects as well as access to former project presentations to help them generate ideas. I urge them to create something that they'd be proud to include in their electronic portfolio and talk about in a job interview or graduate school application. Students are encouraged to be imaginative and take creative risks. Back when I taught these courses in a computer lab, the semester always ended with final project presentations and I usually brought dessert. Now that the courses are online, I provide a Project Showcase page with links to final project screencasts that the students create.

Student reflection and feedback about course texts

Kathy Pfeiffer, Professor of English and Creative Writing 

While my practice is somewhat specific to English and Creative Writing classes, they may be adapted to other disciplines. I ask students to take out a piece of paper or open a blank doc and create 2 columns, one for what they liked reading the most and one for what they learned from the most. I offer them a list of everything we've read across the semester, and ask them to put those readings in whichever categories applied for them (or both, if applicable) -- and we have a discussion about the differences between what we enjoy personally versus what we learn from. This branches out into numerous end-of-semester conversations -- about the differences between what's popular versus what has critical merit (how bestsellers are rarely award winners); between personal pleasure and intellectual/ academic growth; about the relationship between discomfort and education. Sometimes I ask them if they think there's any texts that don't "pull their weight" in class -- readings that ask more of them as a reader than they deliver, through insights, information, aesthetics. Back in the old days of in-person course evaluations, I would always do this before handing out evals and it made for MUCH more useful evals, but even now, they're helpful in gauging how students' responses to material changes, how their taste and needs change.

References and Resources 

Eggleston, T. J., & Smith, G. E. (2002). Parting ways: Ending your course. APS Observer, 15(3).

Fournier, E. (2019, November 11). How to end a course: Teaching tips. Washington University in St. Louis Center for Teaching and Learning.

Hardy, J. (2021, May 3). End-of-the-year reflection: Tools for validation, celebration, gratitude and planning ahead. MyVU News.

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About the Author

Written by Rachel Smydra, Faculty Fellow, Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning at Oakland University. Image by Katerina Holmes. Others may share and adapt under Creative Commons License CC BY-NC. View all CETL Weekly Teaching Tips. Follow these and more on Facebook and LinkedIn.