SAAW Special: Creating meaningful connection online- The psychology of the virtual room

This session will be led by Gillian Proctor, a lecturer in counselling and psychotherapy in the school of healthcare, and Krista Susman a person-centred counsellor, supervisor and manager of an NGO which offers counselling for the unemployed. Interim Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Digital Transformation, Neil Morris will provide an introduction to the workshop.

The aim of the seminar is to provide a space for thinking about the impact of online teaching and meeting on authenticity and relating. These factors in turn influence student engagement, inclusion and learning. We will explore how we can best foster high-quality relationships on video platforms given pedagogical theory that learning is best facilitated through engagement and dialogue rather than one-sided presentations.  We will present psychological online phenomena, such as disembodiment, perception of the self and others, transitioning between private/public, virtual/physical and self/other, power dynamics and how these phenomena affect our abilities to genuinely relate to ourselves and to each other as whole persons. It will include exercises to facilitate your experiencing of these phenomena and time to think about the impact of these on teaching and meeting online.

The event will take place on Zoom, and University of Leeds staff can sign up here.