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Google enthusiasts, unite.
During an ISTELive 25 session, Dr. Wanda Terral, chief of technology for Tennessee’s Lakeland School System, took attendees through a growing list of Google tools, along with some non-Google resources, to boost classroom creativity, productivity, and collaboration.
Here are just 10 of the resources Terral covered–explore the full list for more ideas and resources to increase your Google knowledge.
A year ago, Sir Keir Starmer secured the largest election victory in the UK since 1997.
Labour won 411 seats and a 174-seat majority – and while Labour’s vote share across many constituencies dropped compared to national predictions, the UK was washed with red seats.
Yet as we reflect on Labour’s time in government to date, it’s fair to say the journey has not been smooth.
Starmer has already made several significant U-turns and has announced policy changes that haven’t landed well with voters – increases to national insurance contributions, reducing winter fuel payments and the “tractor tax”, to name a few.
As public trust in the government continues to decline and disapproval rates rise, we are continuing to see a swing of support over to Reform UK – including in constituencies with large student populations.
PLMR recently commissioned Electoral Calculus to conduct a new multi-level regression and post-stratification (MRP) poll to understand voting intentions and the current political attitudes of the public.
Conducted in June 2025 with a sample size of 5,400 individuals, the results show a significant change in student voting patterns and beg the question – is Labour losing the student vote?
If a General Election was called tomorrow, our data currently places Reform UK with 31 per cent of the vote share ahead of Labour with 22 per cent and the Conservatives trailing with 19 per cent. Reform UK is predicted to win an outright majority, securing 377 seats and a majority of 104.
If a General Election was therefore called tomorrow, Nigel Farage would become the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
The data also shows changes in constituency MPs, including for ministers with responsibility for higher education like the Secretary of State for Education, Bridget Phillipson MP, according to the projections.
While the sector is not unaccustomed to experiencing regular and quick changes in political governance – with six university ministers being in post in the last five years alone – the data does point to wider challenges for HE and the student vote.
Last year, the Higher Education Policy Institute (HEPI) published a piece about whether students made a difference at the 2024 General Election – identifying the top twenty student constituencies and Labour’s vote share in these seats.
We have analysed our polling to understand how these constituencies would fare in an election if it were called tomorrow – the results from which show the changing state of voting intentions in these areas.
Of the twenty constituencies, over one-third (35 per cent) are predicted to move away from being Labour-held to either Reform or Green. This aligns with the national picture – voters are showing an ever-growing frustration with the current government and are therefore evolving their political affiliation.
When we look specifically at the data for 18-24-year-olds – acknowledging the experiences of those beyond this age group who are currently studying in UK higher education – we continue to see this pattern of voting behaviour.
For example, when asked who they would vote for if a General Election was called tomorrow, 24 per cent of 18-24-year-olds who indicated a likelihood to vote noted their intention to vote for Labour – with 23 per cent claiming they would vote for Reform UK and 21 per cent for the Green Party.
The Conservatives followed with 13 per cent, the Liberal Democrats with 10 per cent and Scottish National Party and Plaid Cymru with 1 per cent each.
Interestingly, when we then consider the likelihood of voting among 18-24-year-olds we see further frustration with the current political system.
For example, under half (41 per cent) of 18-24-year-olds responded that they would “definitely” vote in a General Election if it were called tomorrow, followed by 11 per cent who would be “very likely” to vote.
Yet 21 per cent responded that they would “definitely not” or are “unlikely” to vote, and 16 per cent were unsure. That reveals an almost even split in the likelihood of voting among 18-24-year-olds. For a traditionally politically mobile population, this raises concerns about young people’s faith and willingness to engage with an election.
Participants were then asked about the most important issues that will influence how they vote at the next General Election, with the top three issues for 18-24-year-olds being the cost of living and the economy (57 per cent), the National Health Service (NHS) waiting times, staffing and funding (45 per cent), and immigration and border control (25 per cent).
While these generally align with trends in all other age groups,
18-24-year-olds express greater concern for wider issues than other age cohorts. For example, 23 per cent of individuals in this age group reported being concerned about housing affordability and home ownership, 22 per cent about trust in politicians and government integrity, and 19 per cent about climate change and the environment.
While some in other age cohorts reported concerns in these areas, the proportion is highest among 18-24-year-olds.
It’s clear that Labour isn’t sustaining the support it built up during the General Election campaign last year, despite securing such an historic electoral victory, and this is true especially in student-heavy constituencies – with many already indicating their interest in seeing an electoral change.
As economic challenges continue to create barriers within HE, with many institutions closing courses, implementing redundancy programmes and depending on international fees due to limited increases to domestic fees in line with inflation, government must be proactive in its engagement with the sector to recognise how challenges to the student experience can impact voter intention.
With a growing national swing towards Reform UK, Labour must become aware of the challenges facing student voters if it wants to change the projected course of action and secure a second term in office.
With lots of work to do ahead of 2029 – and only a year into this Parliament – student interests need to rise up the political agenda.
The popular imagination’s archetype of the student has remained remarkably consistent over the last fifty years.
Ten minutes on TikTok will conjure up the beer-swilling frivolity and clandestine nerdiness of Starter for 10 or the chaotic house share arrangements and endless student scrapes Fresh Meat – neither so far away from those that the cast of The Young Ones enjoyed back in the eighties.
Neither the Covid pandemic nor the ongoing pressures on cost of living has managed to shake the view that the student experience involves leaving home at eighteen in search of a little more education, and a lot more freewheeling independence.
Prospective students’ perception of university are influenced by those stereotypes – and may find them more offputting than appealing. At one of the focus groups we conducted in Doncaster for the UPP Foundation’s inquiry into widening participation one 17 year old put it:
I want to go to uni, to live on my own and to get drunk all the time, like the uni party lifestyle, not for the degree, right? But then, if I do it just for that, then I’m getting into debt.
To those living in higher education cold spot areas like Doncaster, where there are few graduate-level jobs available, higher education stacks up as a bad bet. Young people can’t justify spending all that money on what looks from the outside like a three-year bender, if it won’t lead to a better job back home.
Current students, however, have a more nuanced view. The latest report in the UPP Foundation inquiry explores the experiences of today’s students, drawing on focus groups held in the city of Nottingham, and shows that while they find the social aspect of their courses the most fulfilling in terms of enjoyment and personal development, they are having to weigh their own fun against the costs of study and the imperative to graduate into secure and well-paid graduate jobs. Unlike the living-in-the-moment hedonist student archetype, students are clear that the “point” of higher education is to gain skills and qualifications for their careers, and this focus creates pressure to make their experience “worth it.”
Those who have maintenance loans say that they are nowhere near enough to cover living costs. The majority we spoke to have part-time jobs, or some other kind of money-making “side hustle” which impinge on their ability to take part in the socialising and extra-curricular activity they value. Even those receiving some help from parents spoke to us about stiff competition for part-time jobs and months of searching for work to finance their experiences of student life. For these students, there was a keen sense that if they wanted to have a little fun while at university, then it was their responsibility to earn the money to facilitate that, not their parents’:
I don’t expect my parents to have to pay for me when I want to go out to eat…that’s kind of why I want to work, to be able to maintain my social life, because that’s not my parents’ job at all.
The past few years have seen a notable increase in numbers of commuting students, and this was a clear theme in our research. Some students were living a considerable distance from campus and commuting in as needed; either living independently in locations cheaper from campus or staying at home to save on rent. With many of these students falling through the cracks in the maintenance loan system or unable to rely on family members for financial help, the commuter students we spoke to told us about enduring 5.00am drives to nursing placements and the vagaries of provincial bus schedules as they try to balance their studies with an affordable lifestyle.
Not all of them had intended to commute, but had found on-campus residential life too expensive or too logistically complicated – and some added that they valued the skills and qualities their commuter experience had given them. But for these students, too, the social and extracurricular aspects of the student experience fall by the wayside. As one university sports club president explained to us of his commuter student friends:
Commuting means you’ll only come into campus when you really need to be there, so you don’t really get to make friends on your course, or you don’t really get to go and do sports and stuff, because there’s no point in you coming all the way just for two hours of football.
It really was not that long ago that maintenance grants were the norm and student life was cheap and cheerful. Policymakers, and possibly even some university leaders may still unconsciously think in those terms. But that model of student life is eroding, leaving too many on the wrong side of a bifurcated student experience in which some get to realise all the social fulfilment and enjoyment of traditional university life, while others cling on by their fingertips.
There are two possible responses to sustaining this broad-based student experience that the 2019 Augar review of post-18 education and funding called “a deep-seated part of English culture”: either the core curriculum must be expanded or the cost of accessing student life must be reduced. Taking either of these paths involves difficult and costly political and economic trade-offs. It won’t be cheap, but as any undergraduate will tell you, students are experts at making a little go a long way.
Download Fulfilment and outcomes: the student experience in 2025, the latest report of the UPP Foundation inquiry into widening participation here.
A randomised control trial has found that early intervention support for highly disengaged first-year equity students does not necessarily lead to higher participation.
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This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Sign up for their newsletters at ckbe.at/newsletters.
Roughly half of middle and high schoolers report losing interest in math class at least half the time, and 1 in 10 lack interest nearly all the time during class, a new study shows.
In addition, the students who felt the most disengaged in math class said they wanted fewer online activities and more real-world applications in their math classes.
Those and other findings published Tuesday from the research corporation RAND highlight several ongoing challenges for instruction in math, where nationwide student achievement has yet to return to pre-pandemic levels and the gap between the highest and lowest-performing students in math has continued to grow.
Feeling bored in math class from time to time is not an unusual experience, and feeling “math anxiety” is common. However, the RAND study notes that routine boredom is associated with lower school performance, reduced motivation, reduced effort, and increased rates of dropping out of school.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the study found that the students who are the most likely to maintain their interest in math comprehend math, feel supported in math, are confident in their ability to do well in math, enjoy math, believe in the need to learn math, and see themselves as a “math person.”
Dr. Heather Schwartz, a RAND researcher and the primary investigator of the study, noted that the middle and high school years are when students end up on advanced or regular math tracks. Schwartz said that for young students determining their own sense of math ability, “Tracking programs can be a form of external messaging.”
Nearly all the students who said they identified as a “math person” came to that conclusion before they reached high school, the RAND survey results show. A majority of those students identified that way as early as elementary school. In contrast, nearly a third of students surveyed said they never identified that way.
“Math ability is malleable way past middle school,” Schwartz said. Yet, she noted that the survey indicates students’ perception of their own capabilities often remains static.
The RAND study drew on data from their newly established American Youth Panel, a nationally representative survey of students ages 12-21. It used survey responses of 434 students in grades 5-12. Because this was the first survey sent to members of the panel, there is no comparable data on student math interest prior to the pandemic, so it doesn’t measure any change in student interest.
The RAND study found that 26% percent of students in middle and high school reported losing interest during a majority of their math lessons. On the other end of the spectrum, a quarter of students said they never or almost never lost interest in math class.
There weren’t major differences in the findings across key demographic groups: Students in middle and high school, boys and girls, and students of different races and ethnicities reported feeling bored during a majority of math class at similar rates.
Dr. Janine Remillard, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education and expert in mathematics curriculum, said that in many math classes, “It’s usually four or five students answering all the questions, and then the kids who either don’t understand or are less interested or just take a little bit more time — they just zone out.”
Over 50% of students who lost interest in almost all of their math classes asked for fewer online activities and more real-world problems, the RAND study shows. Schwartz hypothesizes that some online math programs represent a “modern worksheet” and emphasize solo work and repetition. Students who are bored in class instead crave face-to-face activities that focus on application, she said.
During Remillard’s math teacher training classes, she puts students in her math teacher training class into groups to solve math problems. But she doesn’t tell them what strategy to use.
The students are forced to work together in order to understand the process of finding an answer rather than simply repeating a given formula. All of her students typically say that if they had learned math this way, they would think of themselves as a math person, according to Remillard, who was not involved in the RAND study.
Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.
For more news on STEM learning, visit eSN’s STEM & STEAM hub.
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As the final school bells ring and students head into summer vacation, educators and parents alike are turning their attention to the phenomenon known as the summer slide–the learning loss that can occur when children take a long break from structured academic activity.
NWEA research notes that students can lose up to two months of math skills over the summer, and reading abilities can also decline, particularly for students from underserved communities.
But the summer slide isn’t inevitable. With the growing availability of engaging, high-quality online learning tools, students have more opportunities than ever to keep their skills sharp. These tools offer interactive lessons, personalized learning paths, and fun activities that reinforce what students learned during the school year–without making summer feel like school.
Here are five standout online resources designed to help K-12 students stay on track over the summer months:
1. Khan Academy: Khan Academy’s free online platform offers comprehensive lessons in math, science, history, and more. Its summer learning programs provide structured plans for students in grades K-12, including daily activities tailored by grade level. Each lesson includes short instructional videos, interactive quizzes, and mastery challenges. For students who want to get ahead or reinforce tricky concepts from the previous school year, Khan Academy is an ideal, self-paced resource.
Khan Kids, a separate app for younger learners (ages 2-8), combines educational videos, stories, and games that focus on early literacy, math, and social-emotional development.
2. PBS LearningMedia: PBS LearningMedia curates thousands of free videos, lesson plans, and interactive activities aligned to state and national standards. The content is engaging and age-appropriate, drawing from trusted PBS programs like Wild Kratts, NOVA, and Peg + Cat. During the summer, PBS typically offers special themed weeks–like “Summer of Reading” or “Science Week”–featuring playlists and activity bundles to help children stay curious and engaged.
For younger children, PBS Kids also provides games and shows that reinforce foundational skills in reading, math, and critical thinking.
3. ReadWorks: Reading skills are among the most vulnerable to decline during the summer, especially for students who do not have regular access to books or structured reading activities. ReadWorks is a nonprofit platform offering free, research-based reading comprehension materials for grades K-12. Teachers and parents can assign grade-level texts, paired with vocabulary lessons and comprehension questions. The platform also features an Article-A-Day challenge that encourages students to build background knowledge and reading stamina with just 10 minutes a day. ReadWorks is especially helpful for English Language Learners, offering audio versions and question supports to aid comprehension.
4. Prodigy: For students who struggle to stay motivated during math practice, Prodigy turns learning into a role-playing adventure game. Students solve math problems to earn rewards and level up characters, making the experience both educational and fun. Aligned with state standards and suitable for grades 1-8, Prodigy adapts to each learner’s skill level, offering targeted practice without the pressure of grades or tests. Parents can access dashboards to track progress and set goals over the summer. Prodigy also offers a version for English Language Arts, expanding the platform’s reach beyond numbers.
5. Smithsonian Learning Lab: For families looking to incorporate cross-curricular learning, the Smithsonian Learning Lab provides a treasure trove of multimedia collections that blend history, science, art, and culture. Students can explore virtual exhibits, complete inquiry-based lessons, and create their own digital portfolios. The platform is well-suited for middle and high school students, especially those interested in project-based learning and critical thinking. Whether studying the Civil Rights Movement or learning about ecosystems, students can explore real artifacts, images, and primary sources from the Smithsonian’s vast collection.
Keeping minds active and curious
Experts emphasize that summer learning doesn’t need to mirror the structure of the traditional classroom–keeping students intellectually engaged as they explore their personal interests reinforces academic skills in an low-stress environment.
Families can also incorporate daily routines that promote learning–reading together before bed, practicing math while cooking, or exploring nature to spark scientific curiosity.
As the digital learning landscape expands, there are more tools than ever to support students year-round. With just 20-30 minutes of meaningful academic engagement each day, students can maintain their momentum and return to the classroom in the fall ready to learn.
Institutions spend a lot of time surveying students for their feedback on their learning experience, but once you have crunched the numbers the hard bit is working out the “why.”
The qualitative information institutions collect is a goldmine of insight about the sentiments and specific experiences that are driving the headline feedback numbers. When students are especially positive, it helps to know why, to spread that good practice and apply it in different learning contexts. When students score some aspect of their experience negatively, it’s critical to know the exact nature of the perceived gap, omission or injustice so that it can be fixed.
Any conscientious module leader will run their eye down the student comments in a module feedback survey – but once you start looking across modules to programme or cohort level, or to large-scale surveys like NSS, PRES or PTES, the scale of the qualitative data becomes overwhelming for the naked eye. Even the most conscientious reader will find that bias sets in, as comments that are interesting or unexpected tend to be foregrounded as having greater explanatory power over those that seem run of the mill.
Traditional coding methods for qualitative data require someone – or ideally more than one person – to manually break down comments into clauses or statements that can be coded for theme and sentiment. It’s robust, but incredibly laborious. For student survey work, where the goal might be to respond to feedback and make improvements at pace, institutions are open that this kind of robust analysis is rarely, if ever, the standard practice. Especially as resources become more constrained, devoting hours to this kind of detailed methodological work is rarely a priority.
That is where machine learning technology can genuinely change the game. Student Voice AI was founded by Stuart Grey, an academic at the University of Strathclyde (now working at the University of Glasgow), initially to help analyse student comments for large engineering courses. Working with Advance HE he was able to train the machine learning model on national PTES and PRES datasets. Now, further training the algorithm on NSS data, Student Voice AI offers literally same-day analysis of student comments for NSS results for subscribing institutions.
Put the words “AI” and “student feedback” in the same sentence and some people’s hackles will immediately rise. So Stuart spends quite a lot of time explaining how the analysis works. The word he uses to describe the version of machine learning Student Voice AI deploys is “supervised learning” – humans manually label categories in datasets and “teach” the machine about sentiment and topic. The larger the available dataset the more examples the machine is exposed to and the more sophisticated it becomes. Through this process Student Voice AI has landed on a discreet number of comment themes and categories for taught students and the same for postgraduate research students that the majority of student comments consistently fall into – trained on and distinctive to UK higher education student data. Stuart adds that the categories can and do evolve:
“The categories are based on what students are saying, not what we think they might be talking about – or what we’d like them to be talking about. There could be more categories if we wanted them, but it’s about what’s digestible for a normal person.”
In practice that means that institutions can see a quantitative representation of their student comments, sorted by category and sentiment. You can look at student views of feedback, for example, and see the balance of positive, neutral and negative sentiment, overall, segment it into departments or subject areas, or years of study, then click through to see the relevant comments to see what’s driving that feedback. That’s significantly different from, say, dumping your student comments into a third party generative AI platform (sharing confidential data with a third party while you’re at it) and asking it to summarise. There’s value in the time and effort saved, but also in the removal of individual personal bias, and the potential for aggregation and segmentation for different stakeholders in the system. And it also becomes possible to compare student qualitative feedback across institutions.
Now, Student Voice AI is partnering with student insight platform evasys to bring machine learning technology to qualitative data collected via the evasys platform. And evasys and Student Voice AI have been commissioned by Advance HE to code and analyse open comments from the 2025 PRES and PTES surveys – creating opportunities to drill down into a national dataset that can be segmented by subject discipline and theme as well as by institution.
Bruce Johnson, managing director at evasys is enthused about the potential for the technology to drive culture change both in how student feedback is used to inform insight and action across institutions:
“When you’re thinking about how to create actionable insight from survey data the key question is, to whom? Is it to a module leader? Is it to a programme director of a collection of modules? Is it to a head of department or a pro vice chancellor or the planning or quality teams? All of these are completely different stakeholders who need different ways of looking at the data. And it’s also about how the data is presented – most of my customers want, not only quality of insight, but the ability to harvest that in a visually engaging way.”
“Coming from higher education it seems obvious to me that different stakeholders have very different uses for student feedback data,” says Stuart Grey. “Those teaching at the coalface are interested in student engagement; at the strategic level the interest is in strategic level interest in trends and sentiment analysis and there are also various stakeholder groups in professional services who never get to see this stuff normally, but we can generate the reports that show them what students are saying about their area. Frequently the data tells them something they knew anyway but it gives them the ammunition to be able to make change.”
Duncan Berryman, student surveys officer at Queens University Belfast, sums up the value of AI analysis for his small team: “It makes our life a lot easier, and the schools get the data and trends quicker.” Previously schools had been supplied with Excel spreadsheets – and his team were spending a lot of time explaining and working through with colleagues how to make sense of the data on those spreadsheets. Being able to see a straightforward visualisation of student sentiment on the various themes means that, as Duncan observes rather wryly, “if change isn’t happening it’s not just because people don’t know what student surveys are saying.”
Parama Chaudhury, professor of economics and pro vice provost education (student academic experience) at University College London explains where qualitative data analysis sits in the wider ecosystem for quality enhancement of teaching and learning. In her view, for enhancement purposes, comparing your quantitative student feedback scores to those of another department is not particularly useful – essentially it’s comparing apples with oranges. Yet the apparent ease of comparability of quantitative data, compared with the sense of overwhelm at the volume and complexity of student comments, can mean that people spend time trying to explain the numerical differences, rather than mining the qualitative data for more robust and actionable explanations that can give context to your own scores.
It’s not that people weren’t working hard on enhancement, in other words, but they didn’t always have the best possible information to guide that work. “When I came into this role quite a lot of people were saying ‘we don’t understand why the qualitative data is telling us this, we’ve done all these things,’” says Parama. “I’ve been in the sector a long time and have received my share of summaries of module evaluations and have always questioned those summaries because it’s just someone’s ‘read.’ Having that really objective view, from a well-trained algorithm makes a difference.”
UCL has tested two-page summaries of student comments to specific departments this academic year, and plans to roll out a version for every department this summer. The data is not assessed in a vacuum; it forms part of the wider institutional quality assurance and enhancement processes which includes data on a range of different perspectives on areas for development. Encouragingly, so far the data from students is consistent with what has emerged from internal reviews, giving the departments that have had the opportunity to engage with it greater confidence in their processes and action plans.
None of this stops anyone from going and looking at specific student comments, sense-checking the algorithm’s analysis and/or triangulating against other data. At the University of Edinburgh, head of academic planning Marianne Brown says that the value of the AI analysis is in the speed of turnaround – the institutionl carries out a manual reviewing process to be sure that any unexpected comments are picked up. But being able to share the headline insight at pace (in this case via a PowerBI interface) means that leaders receive the feedback while the information is still fresh, and the lead time to effect change is longer than if time had been lost to manual coding.
The University of Edinburgh is known for its cutting edge AI research, and boasts the Edinburgh (access to) Language Models (ELM) a platform that gives staff and students access to generative AI tools without sharing data with third parties, keeping all user data onsite and secured. Marianne is clear that even a closed system like ELM is not appropriate for unfettered student comment analysis. Generative AI platforms offer the illusion of a thematic analysis but it is far from robust because generative AI operates through sophisticated guesswork rather than analysis of the implications of actual data. “Being able to put responses from NSS or our internal student survey into ELM to give summaries was great, until you started to interrogate those summaries. Robust validation of any output is still required,” says Marianne. Similarly Duncan Berryman observes: “If you asked a gen-AI tool to show you the comments related to the themes it had picked out, it would not refer back to actual comments. Or it would have pulled this supposed common theme from just one comment.”
The holy grail of student survey practice is creating a virtuous circle: student engagement in feedback creates actionable data, which leads to education enhancement, and students gain confidence that the process is authentic and are further motivated to share their feedback. In that quest, AI, deployed appropriately, can be an institutional ally and resource-multiplier, giving fast and robust access to aggregated student views and opinions. “The end result should be to make teaching and learning better,” says Stuart Grey. “And hopefully what we’re doing is saving time on the manual boring part, and freeing up time to make real change.”
Over 150 students and staff from 20 separate universities claim free speech about Palestine has been restricted on campus, according to a report released on Thursday.
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During my five years living alongside 340 undergraduate students as a hall warden, I have become a firm believer that residential halls are powerful civic learning environments.
This realisation did not come immediately; if anything, I saw my role as strictly pastoral rather than having any connections to learning and teaching.
At first glance, the role of a warden has little to do with learning. The term, warden, is an outdated and often confusing title (we are in the process of changing it) to describe a staff member responsible for responding to high-level mental health and disciplinary matters and occasional residential life events.
I initially approached my role with misplaced enthusiasm, intervening in all manner of student conflicts, leaving little room for their own responsibility. Finding a middle ground between complete non-intervention and excessive control proved a real challenge.
Over time, I came to understand that effective support meant creating space for disagreement and face-to-face conflict resolution rather than solving problems on students’ behalf.
When I first started, the complaints I received usually came because a student came to my front of house colleagues to alert them of their problem. Whereas now they arrive electronically through e-mail.
It makes sense. It’s easier, quicker and also means students who may not be around during my formal working hours can make me aware of any issues.
But sometimes the multiple reports I receive overnight detail seemingly minor problems like a roommate not turning off lights or leaving a window open.
I think the ease with which students can complain, especially virtually, prevents students from developing crucial conflict resolution skills. Part of living amongst other people is learning to address disagreements. It’s not easy and it’s certainly not comfortable, but it does help you grow as a person.
It forces you to connect with others you may not agree with – either because of various socio-economic backgrounds, religious views or with those who have different ideas of cleanliness from you.
I have witnessed meaningful connections form across religious and gender identities, and social classes within student halls. For example, the son of a billionaire bonding with a flatmate who had spent summers as an agricultural labourer in fields in Lincolnshire. Two people who likely would not have crossed paths if they had not chosen to study at the same university.
I’ve seen interfaith events attended by those with differing faiths or none at all leading to genuine friendships.
These interactions lack formal learning objectives or assessment metrics, yet provide education that our lecture halls struggle to deliver. Providing the literal space for students to meet helps them develop social capital they cannot necessarily get in a classroom.
As a sector, we could do more to analyse and report on the civic benefits offered by halls of residence, and we are beginning to do this work at LSE.
Most UK university halls operate under an outdated property management model, functioning more like luxury hotels than educational spaces. Some private accommodation companies have introduced luxury facilities where students from wealthy families isolate themselves in environments featuring swimming pools and designer furnishings. While aesthetically impressive, these spaces lack genuine community or learning opportunities.
These approaches miss a crucial opportunity. Residence halls are sites of learning graduate skills, just as much as the formal classroom. Future employers want complex problem-solving and collaboration skill but the added value of being able to resolve conflict well lies beyond career preparation.
In my view, modern universities have moved away from an integrated educational vision, focusing primarily on specialised knowledge instead. This fragmentation leaves students ill-equipped to interrogate complex questions and self-discovery.
Part of this includes being able to navigate conflict constructively and understanding how to create community across differences.
Residence halls provide spaces where intellectual, ethical, social, and practical dimensions of education can be reintegrated. Abstract concepts from seminars become concrete realities when negotiating shared living. Moral and civic education requires practical engagement with substantive questions about the common good.
Living amongst peers is a way of acknowledging higher education as a collective endeavour rather than a timetable of classes and lectures.
Is this overthinking spaces that should prioritise fun and exploration? I don’t think so. Our halls of residence aren’t peripheral to education. Properly reconceived, they could become central to what makes university education distinctive and valuable as higher education confronts an uncertain future.
New York, NY – Counslr, a leading B2B mental health and wellness platform, announced today that it has expanded its footprint into the State of Texas starting with a partnership with Colorado Independent School District (ISD) in Colorado City, TX. This partnership will empower students and staff to prioritize their mental health by enabling them to access unlimited live texting sessions with Counslr’s licensed and vetted mental health support professionals, who are available on-demand, 24/7/365 and also utilize the app’s robust and curated wellness resources. By increasing accessibility to Counslr’s round-the-clock support, Colorado ISD aims to empower those silent sufferers who previously did not or could not access care, whether due to cost, inconvenience, or stigma.
Texas is facing a critical mental health care crisis, with over 95% of its counties officially designated as Mental Health Professional Shortage Areas. This alarming statistic underscores the severe lack of access to mental health services across the state, particularly in rural, border, and frontier communities. This resource scarcity underscores the urgent need for additional resources and innovative solutions to bridge this critical care gap for school communities.
“We’re excited to partner with Counslr to bring innovative, accessible mental health resources to our school community,” said Alison Alvarez, Family and Community Engagement Coordinator, of Colorado ISD. “This partnership empowers our 6-12 grade students and staff with the support they need to thrive—both in and out of the classroom.”
As factors such as academic pressures, social media influence, burnout and world events contribute to an increase in mental health challenges for young people, schools throughout the country are recognizing the growing need to offer more accessible, prevention-focused resources. A recent study found that digital mental health apps like Counslr can play an important role in expanding access to mental health support, especially for school communities. Most users turned to Counslr through on-demand sessions, showing just how valuable it is to have someone available in the moment when support is needed most. Interestingly, more than 80% of sessions happened between 7 PM and 5 AM, a time when traditional counseling services are usually unavailable. This suggests that Counslr helps fill a critical gap, offering students and school community members a reliable way to talk to licensed counselors around the clock. The app was also used for a wide range of concerns, highlighting its potential to meet diverse mental health needs through both immediate and scheduled support.
“As we expand across the country, we’re proud to partner with new school communities to ensure that every student, regardless of location or background, has access to the mental health support they deserve,” said Josh Liss, Counslr CEO. Adding that, “With most of Counslr’s users being first-time care seekers, we’re excited to help reach those traditionally unreachable, who need help but do not or cannot access it, no matter where they are located.”
ABOUT COUNSLR
Counslr is a text-based mental health support application that provides unlimited access to robust wellness resources and live texting sessions with licensed professionals, 24/7/365. Users can access support on-demand within two minutes of opening the app, or by scheduled appointment. Through real-time texting, users enjoy one-on-one, private communication with a licensed counselor that can be conducted anytime, anywhere. Counslr was designed to help individuals deal with life’s day-to-day issues, empowering individuals to address concerns while they are “small” to help ensure that they stay “small”. Counslr partners with organizations of all shapes and sizes (companies, unions, nonprofits, universities/colleges, high schools, etc) so that these entities can provide Counslr’s services to their employees/members/students at no direct cost. For more information, please visit www.counslr.com.
