Bandwidth Recovery: Helping Students Reclaim Cognitive Resources

Learning path

Bandwidth Recovery: Helping Students Reclaim Cognitive Resources

Cia Verschelden

The goal of this learning path is to help you maximise your students cognitive capacity for learning by tackling bandwidth stealer factors and social realities that make it harder for some students to reach their full academic potential.

About

Courses and Progress

Meet the Experts

About the Learning Path

Welcome to a sequence of five courses entitled ‘Bandwidth Recovery: Helping Students Reclaim Cognitive Resources ‘ which has been developed with Cia Verschelden.

Through these courses, you will learn about the concept of bandwidth cognitive capacity and come to recognise the social realities that mean some students arrive in higher education with reduced capacity to learn. You’ll discover how to tackle bandwidth stealers and create a learning environment in which your students feel safe and able to learn. And you’ll find principles and techniques you can apply in your teaching, whether online, in person or both.

And an initial word of caution. As educators, we are not immune to the bandwidth stealers. Some of the topics we will cover may be deeply personal to you. Please think about yourself as well as your students you can’t help others without being in a good place to do so.

AN OVERVIEW OF YOUR JOURNEY

Within each course you will find the same basic framework, with lessons leading you from the introduction to the conclusion. You will gain the most from the courses by reading the text, watching the short videos, and adding your comments to the discussion threads. But once again, you should of course feel free to chart your own path through the material, depending upon your teaching context and your specific needs and interests.

Courses and Progress

Your progress through the learning path will update as you complete the courses. The courses you are yet to complete will appear greyed out and the ones you have already completed display in colour.

My Learning Path Progress

Introduction To Bandwidth Recovery

with Cia Verschelden

Due to social phenomena like poverty, racism, classism, ableism, homophobia, xenophobia, and other 'differentisms', many students arrive at college with depleted cognitive capacity for learning. Teachers can use strategies in our classrooms to help them recover.

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Introduction To Bandwidth Recovery course completion badge

Bandwidth Stealers And How To Recover: Microaggressions And Ground Rules

with Cia Verschelden

Microaggressions are small, subtle insults, slights, and invalidations that eat away at self-confidence and make people feel unsure, unsafe, and constantly vigilant. All this uncertainty depletes bandwidth. We can create learning spaces where microaggressions are minimised and where everyone can learn.

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Bandwidth Stealers And How To Recover: Stereotype Threat and Identity Threat

When students are members of groups about whom there are negative stereotypes, performance can be depressed by worry about confirming those stereotypes. Learning spaces can be identity-safe or identity-threat environments, with resultant positive or deleterious effects on student learning.

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Bandwidth Stealers and How To Recover: Stereotype Threat and Identity Threat course completion badge

Bandwidth Stealers and How to Recover: Adverse Childhood Experiences

with Cia Verschelden

The potential long-term effects of childhood trauma on adult health and well-being have been strongly documented in public health research. We can create learning environments that support students whose learning might be impaired by those negative effects.

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Bandwidth Stealers and How to Recover: Belonging Uncertainty

with Cia Verschelden

When students are not sure they belong in a class or on campus, they may struggle to be academically successful. There are things we can do in our classrooms and other learning settings to nurture students' sense of belonging.

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Meet the Experts

Cia Verschelden

Bandwidth Recovery

Cia Verschelden is the author of Bandwidth Recovery: Helping Students Reclaim Cognitive Resources Lost to Poverty, Racism, and Social Marginalization (2025), in which she makes the case that the mental bandwidth of many college students in certain non-majority groups is depleted by persistent economic insecurity and psychosocial underminers, like racism and homophobia. She describes in-class and out-of-class interventions and attention to campus environments that can help students regain bandwidth so they can be academically successful. Her new book (2020) applies these concepts to children and youth: Bandwidth Recovery for Schools: Helping Pre-K-12 Students Regain Cognitive Resources Lost to Poverty, Trauma, Racism and Social Marginalization.