Developing a toolkit for teaching sensitive topics at a distance learning university

Abstract

A growing proportion of UK university students are affected by poor mental health, which is associated with lower grades and completion rates (Thorley, 2017). This is a particular concern for educators in distance learning environments, where mental health issues are disclosed at a higher rate (Lister, Seale and Douce, 2023), and for those teaching sensitive topics which have the capacity to evoke an emotional response (Kim et al., 2020). This article reviews the development of an innovative project to address these concerns at The Open University, a large distance learning provider in the UK. The project began in 2019 as a workshop for psychology and counselling tutors before evolving into a scholarship project which produced a toolkit for teaching sensitive topics. Since its launch in May 2020, the toolkit has been accessed by over 1100 staff members at the university. The article includes an outline of the toolkit's contents, critically reviews its development, and presents feedback from users. The article concludes with plans for the expansion of the toolkit into a large-scale, publicly available resource for educators at other further and higher education institutions.