Abstract
This paper explores a path for those of us in the university classroom to re-think our approach to the millennial students we teach. The research question ponders what foremost initiatives we may implement to advance our students’ learning. A signposted series of ideas is posted and prompted by the first four letters in the alphabet. “A” is for “Activating our Millennial Learners.” This is call to set our students up for success at the start. “B” stands for “Building Bonds of Knowledge Retention” for core discipline knowledge. What long term learning should our students take forward? The third initiative is “Collaboration” and urges us to work more closely with those co-responsible for delivering the learning. The final initiative is “Data Analytics”. How can we prioritize our students to leverage analytical skills around big data? In conclusion, the challenge is to shift our focus away from being an ‘instructor’ to becoming a ‘partner in learning.’
Although the philosophy of learning has evolved significantly over recent decades, what actually happens in the university classroom and beyond appears stubbornly resistant to change. It's difficult to comprehend why, despite the rampant and dramatic shift in almost everything around us, education looks pretty much like it did 100 years ago. Perhaps university lecturers are hardwired by their own personal learning experience, perpetuating a cycle of repetition. Perhaps some university authorities have fallen short in guiding and equipping their staff to make the shift from lecturers/presenters to ‘learning enablers’. Or possibly, with the eclectic diversity of opinions across this space, there is no real prospect of one best-practice approach to advance student learning. Whatever the reason, in this surprisingly adaptive world, few tertiary education providers can evidence substantive adaptations to their core service offering.
Within the tertiary educational market, there are significant changes on both the demand and supply side. On the demand end, there is vivid evidence of a new type of learner emerging from our technology-driven world. Relative to their parents, millennial students are painted as more entitled, having less realistic expectations yet more anxious about their capability to perform. (Morreale and Staley, 2016). On the supply side, the shift towards partly or fully self-funded tertiary institutions has fuelled a competitive university sector (Krause, 2005). Student attraction and retention have become paramount with student enrolments underpinning course viability and financial sustainability. The student consumer is well and truly ‘campus king and queen’.
Perhaps too much is made of the significance of profiling the ‘millennial student’. Commentators are quick to roll out the learning traits of those seated in the tertiary classroom. Others caution that the stereotyping may be taking us off track, since it may accurately apply only to a small subset of millennial students (Rudick and Ellison, 2016).
The profiling of millennial students encompasses both positive and negative traits. The negative collection includes descriptions such as ‘academically entitled’ (Buckner and Strawser, 2016); ‘self-centred’ and ‘anxious’ (Morreale and Staley, 2016).
On the positive side, millennials are commonly described as ‘technologically advanced’ (Worley, 2011); ‘connected’ and ‘agile’ (Morreale and Staley, 2016).
In this brave new world, student sentiment is commonly harvested and applied to re-shape academic performance expectations, assessment criteria and grading requirements. But are we still just tinkering on an outdated model? Is the current model, at best, just lumbering along? Should we seek to build a new one? Perhaps, but that discussion is for another occasion.
Right here, this commentary is focused on what you (faculty at the University of Wherever) may do to nudge student advancement via the classes that you teach.
Surprisingly, up to 40% of students at a Czech Republic University claimed to experience problems when studying (Juklova, 2013). Conversely, a US-based longitudinal survey of university students between 1966 and 2009 reported that 2009 students had a significantly higher tendency to rate themselves as “above average” in academic ability and beyond (McAllum, 2016). However, the bravado may mask an underlying low efficacy as many millennials also report anxiety (Morreale and Staley, 2016) about their real ability to perform (coined the “imposter syndrome”).
Since the effectiveness of student learning is positively related to the perceived quality of teaching (Juklova, 2013), what can we do to encourage our students to advance their power as learners? This gives rise to Research Question 1:
RQ1: What is the foremost contribution that university instructors can make to their students’ advancement?
This embodies the great quest of quality education and will require input from all stakeholders. Just to scratch the surface, here are four areas that may improve the fortunes of the learners in your care.
A – Activate the learner within
To activate the learner within, we first need to understand who the learner is. When teaching in small group settings, there is greater opportunity to understand and engage more meaningfully with your students. Get into their lane and work within their mindset to effect advancement.
Millennial students are more likely to re-frame, recycle and reuse information (Roa, 2013) to answer assignments. They are more likely to demand grades for effort, even when their efforts are misguided (McAllum 2016). They are more likely to attribute their learning difficulties to their instructor than themselves (Goldman and Martin, 2016) and instructors are perceived as being responsible for students’ outcomes (Buckner and Strawser 2016). McAllum (2016) reports students using exemplars of previous student work and assessment rubrics (showing criteria for excellence) as a crutch rather than a springboard.
If these perceptions are indeed embedded into our students’ cognition, no good will come from confronting their line of thinking. Accept it and work towards constructive change from within that space. Clear instructions, structured/formative assessments, prompt/regular feedback (particularly ‘in-progress’ feedback) and helpful intervention are some of the strategies that may well shift these cognitions (McAllum, 2016).
Here's a key strategy example that you may consider to help activate the learner:
Leverage your first lesson
During the first week of term, most learners arrive at our classrooms refreshed from the recent break. Typically, we provide an orientation for first year cohorts, but for returning students, orientation comprises a hearty welcome back and possibly some form of a “Get-To-Know-You game”.
However, the first class of term presents a rare opportunity for the course facilitator. Firstly, it generally attracts a higher attendance rate than subsequent classes. Secondly, it comprises a not-yet-jaded group of students with fresh ears who are super-tuned in. Admittedly, they are working out what obstacles they need to scale to achieve the almighty pass. Nevertheless, fresh attention is a rarity in any classroom and we'd be remiss not to leverage this opportunity.
It's a good idea to run a group discussion among your teaching staff to flush out ideas to optimize the first class opportunity to advance learning. Many great ideas may stem from that, but just to get the ball rolling, here are three thoughts that may add into the mix:
Orientate the learner, most do not know how to learn unless you tell them
The quest to learn may not necessarily be innate to the learner. Perhaps, we need to ‘lure’ learners to reflect on and advance their learning. Run a ten minute in-class group discussion. Ask students what methods of learning they currently use. Probe students on what they could do better and challenge them to revise their approach. Build small adjustments into their day/week/term that are appropriate to the nature of the learning for the course. Students may set alerts on their phones/calendars at specified intervals to reflect on whether they have achieved their revised learning objectives. Prompt students through the term as to whether they are sticking to their advancement plan.
Strive to elicit attention and interest among your students
Within a Services Marketing context, Wirtz and Lovelock compare service delivery to a “stage performance” (Wirtz and Lovelock, 2018, p. 51). There's no closer example of the stage analogy than the classroom environment. As learning enablers, we have a great opportunity to connect with students in a live setting by ramping up our ‘emotional’ dial. Let your emotions run – plan to build enthusiasm, intrigue, charm, surprise, warmth, passion, storytelling into your classroom. Connect personally with your material and ‘be yourself’, but be the best version of you. And beware of showing any sniff of appearing insincere, needy or desperate!
End strong
Plan in advance how each class will end, particularly the first class. Make it the highlight of the class, but make sure that your ending connects to the material for that day. Have them leave the room on a strong note and they will want to return!
B - Build and continue to build “Bonds of Knowledge Retention” for key discipline knowledge
If you have ever opened your class with the lines, “what do you recall from last week's content”, you'll know that students start to look around anxiously for some external source. Not surprisingly, most of the knowledge gained during a university course is lost soon after completion (Bacon and Stewart 2006). Memory is a fantastic garden but it has to be watered!
We often point to our degree certificate as ‘proof’ of our competence in a particular area of study. But how much of that is internalised? No doubt that today's information-rich world is accessed by knowing where to search, but how might a potential employer rate a graduate interviewee with inadequate discipline knowledge at their fingertips?
Discipline knowledge is the precursor to all other learning skills. Without adequate foundational knowledge safely tucked away in our grey matter, the learner cannot evidence his or her area of study. Tertiary learning facilitators should strive to embed ‘learning gems’ into the classroom culture. We need to delve into our course material and identify the discipline knowledge students absolutely need to take forward into their pending careers. And we need to embed these gems into a safe place, in the student's long term memory. If we impart enough emotion around these gems and we water their memory repeatedly, students will integrate an indelible recall of key discipline knowledge.
C - Collaborate with the group of educators teaching across concurrent courses
It's no secret that academia is set up along individual lines. Although we collaborate around matters of school policy, once in our classrooms, teaching can be a very private domain. What do others know of what you actually do in the classroom? Yes, there's a push for more transparency through evidencing for promotion application or in ‘Peer Review of Teaching’ initiatives, but that's a long way from ‘teaching collaboration’.
With few exceptions, we can almost all do with a bit more collaboration in our teaching. Particularly in the tutorial environment, it's possible that students attending Course A may receive a very different learning experience from Facilitator 1 versus Facilitator 2. Throw in remote campuses and it is very difficult for Course A's co-ordinator to really know what's going on abroad. Student disgruntlement is generally the first sign of poor student experience. Making sure that all staff invested in facilitating Course A are ‘singing off the same songs sheet’ requires a big effort from the coordinator. It can be done, but it requires intent and persistence.
Then there's the next level up - collaboration among the Course Coordinators who collectively deliver the credits required across a specific stream of study. This is even less likely to happen! But imagine the power of the final product if courses back each other up, building a planned bundle of cumulative learning that is connected and synergistic. Powerful learning reinforcement across courses, cumulative momentum for career planning, heightened student perception of staff competency and connectedness, consolidating the ‘gems of learning’ etc. It can be done but even more intent and more persistence is required.
D – Data analytics
It's projected that between 2009 and 2020, the size of digital data is expected to grow by 4400% (Villars et al. 2011). Regardless of their chosen career, success will follow those graduates who can uncover the gold nuggets buried within the huge swamps of data. Those who process, structure and clean the data, extract insights and deliver value to users are pivotal to the next phase of digitization. In other words, those who can extract and apply intelligence from big data will be at the cutting edge of advancement.
To what extent are our students being prepared to leverage analytical skills around big data. Is this adequately built into our academic programs? This is not only a matter of developing and revising data analytics courses. We also need to build digital applications into every course currently being taught. It's not simply a case of injecting a few You Tube clips into our course content. What's needed is a complete re-think and overhaul of the analytics, data and digital content currently invested in our courses. Start at the end point (what employees want from graduates) and work backwards to develop learning outcomes to achieve this.
Conclusion
The research question posed in this commentary relates to which button we can push to advance student learning. In light of the discussion presented, it seems that the foremost and most direct shift is to recalibrate our mindset. Get closer to your students, become their dance partner – metaphorically of course! Invite them into the dance of advancement and open their minds to the potential that lies within themselves. Lifelong learning is a journey, co-produced by the facilitator, the student and his or her peer group.
Recalibrate the dial for the first week of class! Challenge students to shed their “I need a degree” mindset in favour of “I want a rewarding career”. Ask students to write down their past learning priorities and methods. Challenge them to set up advancement objectives for the term ahead that are career focused. Get them to write down how they will approach and meet these objectives. Monitor their progress across the term.
Remember that the success of re-framing the student mindset depends on the collective effort. If every learning facilitator across the faculty embraces this perspective, the cumulative impact is both synergistic and potent.
Will all students buy into this? It would be naïve to suggest that. But some will! Those who do will reap valuable rewards that will re-set the bar and evidence to others the benefits of an advancement mindset.
The power is in our hands as instructors to shift our own mindset from ‘instructor’ to ‘partner in learning’. Let's shift the spotlight away from the assignment-focused obstacle course and shine it onto the dancefloor. Let's get our students ready to reap success in their future workplace. Let them know that success happens when preparation meets opportunity.