What is supportive accountability?
Your Student Support Guide (SSG) is here to provide support for you and also hold you accountable to your support plan and goals. This is called supportive accountability. Your SSG will also provide supervised practice, which means you can practice the skills you’re learning from the app together in real life.
Plans for providing supportive accountability are created collaboratively. SSGs and learners should work together closely to determine challenges, goals, and a plan for support. This can be done by using your check-in score to understand what your current challenges are, and by setting your goals and priorities through the goal-setting feature. Check out an example of a supportive accountability plan below for ideas.
Example: Feeling anxious
Ava is in her first year of college and is really feeling anxious. She is a first-generation college student and feels a little out of place. She’s been struggling to keep up in virtual classes and doesn’t like to leave her dorm room. She’s anxious about getting good grades, but also putting off her work because she is in really challenging classes.
Ava is connected to her Student Success Guide, Mia. Mia doesn’t see Ava very often (because Ava doesn’t like to leave her room), but Ava always responds to the secure chats through the MentorHub NU app. This week, Ava indicates on the Check-In that she’s struggling with wellness, and Mia reaches out to see how she’s doing. Ava admits that she is struggling with anxiety, and notices that the MentorHub app recommended both Smiling Mind and MindTrails resources for her to try.
Mia asks Ava if she’s interested in being referred to the college counseling center, and Mia says that she’s not comfortable talking to a therapist at this point. Ava and Mia decide it might be a good start to create a plan for using the recommended apps and go from there.
Step 1: Identify a challenge
As indicated through her check-in scores, Ava is struggling with wellness.
Step 2: Identify a goal
Mia suggests that Ava uses the goal-setting feature so she can get a better sense of what her priorities are and what she wants to work on. Once identifying her priority, Ava and Mia look into Smiling Mind and MindTrails to get a better understanding of how they can help and what a reasonable goal for Ava is.
Ava and Mia look into the apps and notices that the apps teach very different skills. Smiling Mind allows users to learn how to practice mindfulness, a helpful skills for calming anxious thoughts. On the other hand, MindTrails teaches users how to think more flexibly in anxiety-provoking situations. Ava thinks that both sound good, and she’s willing to try both each week. Ava and Mia come up with a plan for Ava to use MindTrails once per week and Smiling Mind every night before bed.
Step 3: Provide supportive accountability
Mia uses her MentorHub NU app to check in on Ava’s use of MindTrails and Smiling Mind. When she notices that Ava hasn’t opened her Smiling Mind app in a few days, she reaches out through the MentorHub app – “Hi Ava – I noticed you haven’t opened Smiling Mind in a while. I know you were really excited to try it every night. Is there something going on?” In this situation, Mia is providing gentle accountability for following through on agreed upon goals. Over time, Ava may find that she likes one app more than the other, or may find that she wants to change how frequently she uses each app. Ava edits her goals in the MentorHub app to reflect this change and records her progress when she can. Over the course of the semester, Ava and Mia continue to collaborate on app usage so that Ava can feel her very best.
Summary
Each plan for supportive accountability is created collaboratively and is flexible! Student Support Guides and Learners should identify a challenge, set goals, and work together through the MentorHub NU app.
