Article by Kris Vespia, Director of the Center of the Advancement of Teaching and Learning (CATL)
As CATL prepares for our semester-long focus on Teaching Today’s UWGB Students, the first step is to identify who those students are. There’s a common narrative out there that UW-Green Bay’s students are fundamentally different today in terms of their academic backgrounds due to our direct admission initiative. There are certainly some ways in which our student body has changed in the last five years, such as the number of high schoolers we serve, but the reality is that there have not been substantial changes in the average ACT score or other academic preparation measures in recent years. However, what is also true is that many of the issues instructors tick off their list of concerns are prominent in national publications today. For example, “Is This the End of Reading?” is the provocative title of a 2024 Chronicle of Higher Education piece that appeared at about the same time The Atlantic published an article highlighting the difficulty of getting undergraduates at Princeton to engage with full texts. A professor from North Central College contemporaneously bemoaned the difficulty students had achieving more than a superficial understanding from readings (Kotsko, 2024). Stories about a “crisis” in college student mental health abound, and statistics support an increase in self-reported anxiety, depression, and trauma (Mowreader, 2024).
If the issues students are facing are not unique to UWGB and its characteristics, what does account for changes in college students over time? Psychologist Jean Twenge (2023) asserts that one large contributor is systematic birth cohort effects. Traditionally aged undergraduates today are members of what is commonly called Gen Z (b. 1995-2012). The first iPhone was introduced in 2007. Think about what that means. Gen Z members and beyond have always obtained information instantaneously and have had it at their very fingertips. Moreover, that information came in easily digestible and often entertaining bits. Is it any wonder that these students would not have much patience with close reading of a long text? Of course, we shouldn’t use “generational differences” to oversimplify the issues. Let’s face it, students of all ages today have different expectations than their instructors probably did in college, given how readily available information has become. If you want to test that out, ask your current students how many of them use TikTok, Instagram, and other forms of social media as a news source.
As we know that behavior is typically influenced by multiple factors, let’s also consider the impact of No Child Left Behind and Common Core on the academic skills that were emphasized in the K-12 curricula that shaped today’s students. What about the pandemic and the learning loss that occurred during that time? It is also not surprising to hear about prevalent mental health concerns in student populations given that it was seen as a “crisis” well before the pandemic hit (Vespia, 2021). Then there are larger economic changes and the cost of tuition nationwide – how has that impacted the multiple roles students must assume? And in what ways has the increased accessibility of education via online learning made it possible for parents and full-time workers to add school to their already-full plates? Finally, let’s not forget AI and the ways in which it makes summaries of articles or a decently written essay just a few keystrokes away. In addition to asking students about the source of their news, you might find it instructive to ask them about their perspectives on the use of AI and academic integrity, which could be quite different from your own.
You may now be asking yourself: so where does that leave us? Well, for one thing, it leaves us in a place of hopefully respecting even more the students with whom we work. They are balancing school with increasingly complex lives in a world that seems to be changing by the minute. It also leaves us with a number of evidence-based teaching strategies, some of which CATL will explore this semester in our blogs and event series. Here are just a few. Did you know, for example, that instructor mindset can play a significant role in achievement gaps among STEM students? CATL looks forward to talking about that research and offering some growth mindset interventions for you and your students. There’s also trauma-informed pedagogy, which does not ask instructors to be therapists, but rather emphasizes creating effective learning environments by, for instance, giving students agency and choice where possible, but maintaining appropriate limits on those choices. Teaching with transparency is another potential tool. Being authentic in the classroom, using the TILT framework in assessment, and demystifying the so-called “hidden curriculum” can all be very effective. You can even find collections of strategies in articles such as McMurtrie’s (2024) “Why Generation Z Gives These Professors Hope.” Ultimately, it’s important to acknowledge the challenges instructors face, whether it’s the use of AI or struggles with student engagement. Validating those frustrations and trying to work through them is essential to good teaching. It’s also crucial to remember, though, that these issues are likely not unique to UWGB. As such, we have many resources to help us as we partner with our students in the teaching and learning process. CATL looks forward to assisting on that journey.