By Lorri Krebs
Department of Geography

Professors Kenneth Ardon of the Salem State College Economics department and Lorri Krebs of the Department of Geography agreed to watch a YouTube video called “A Vision of Students Today” and share their thoughts on some of the questions raised by it. View Professor Ardon’s response.

Something has changed in the college teaching and learning environment today. The dynamics seem to be off. They must be-studies keep reporting it, students complain about it, faculty members discuss options, and many refer to the days of old: “when I was a student, things were much different…”

Is it the classroom? Although chalkboards and podiums still prevail, many classrooms have internet ports, some have projectors, and the very best are dubbed “smart classrooms” with a variety of multimedia wired to perform together (when they are working). The faculty? Are we more in tune with our classroom environment from all of the workshops and circulated literature designed to inspire us to become better teachers? Some may still rely on lectures and chalk, but many professors successfully incorporate multimedia presentations and an array of teaching activities into their classrooms. The students? College students also have changed over time.

If you were to ask 200 faculty members what kind of teachers they are, I expect that the responses would be so varied that even a statistical software package would have difficulty spitting out fewer than 50 principal components. If you ask students to define what kind of teachers they have, they seem to be equally challenged to answer. Through an informal, completely casual, ergo statistically insignificant survey, I determined that the students in my classes could neither define a “typical” college professor nor agree upon measurable characteristics in a reasonable number of categories. Somehow we have evolved from the stereotypical intelligent, boring, and unapproachable beings. Hearing this brings a small, smug smile to my face. I am happy to know that my students do not see us all as I saw the majority of my professors.

A digital ethnographic research effort at Kansas State University (KSU) asked 200 students to define themselves. The results can be viewed in a thought-provoking YouTube video entitled “A Vision of Students Today.” Here is some of what students had to say:

• “I complete 49% of the readings assigned to me / Only 26% relevant to my life”
• “I buy hundred dollar textbooks that I never open”
• “My neighbor paid for class but never comes”
• “I will read 8 books this year / 2,300 web pages, & 1,281 FaceBook profiles”
• “I will write 42 pages for class this semester / and over 500 pages of email”
• “I get 7 hours of sleep each night!”
• “I spend 11/2 hours watching TV each night” “I spend 31/2 hours a day online”
• “I listen to music 2.5 hours a day”
• “I spend 2 hours on my cell phone”
• “Spend 3 hours in class”
• “2 hours eating”
• “I work 2 hours every day”
• “3 hours studying”
• “That’s a total of 26.5 hours per day”
• “I am a multi-tasker / (I have to be)”

Students are different today. This is not why the teaching and learning environment is different; rather, this is why that environment needs to be different.

“The Vision of Students Today” is an interesting summary of the students in our classrooms. Perhaps more intriguing, however, are the hundreds of comments posted on blogs and the plethora of videos taped in response to “The Vision.” Many of these point to the change that has occurred in the teaching and learning environment. The students are outpacing the teachers with social networking technologies and some faculty members are responding by randomly incorporating technology into the classroom. As the gap widens we are just beginning to realize that technology is not meeting the needs of the students. So what can?

If students spend more time reading web pages than books and write more email than class papers, it does not and should not lessen the importance of books and term papers. It does, however, raise the question of how we can incorporate these other activities into a learning environment. If students spend 3 1/2 hours per day on-line and 3 hours studying but might be efficient multitaskers, should not we as teachers maximize time for learning as they are engaged in other activities? Can we not create or take advantage of learning opportunities that exist while students spend time on other activities? When books and face-to-face conversation were the main or only methods of communicating academic ideas, it stood to reason that lectures and readings would have been the preferred methods of teaching and learning. Today, ideas are simultaneously broadcast and received through telephones, iPods, computers, Blackberries, cell phones, TV, radio, satellite, internet, Ethernet, and so forth. As such, is it not realistic to expect that some of these can be successfully incorporated into today’s teaching/learning environment? I know some of my colleagues argue that students today do not read enough books. However, will assigning more books to read help? Are we making a clear case for the importance of reading books? Do they relate to our lectures? Are we talking about those books, discussing their ideas, questioning their relevance, and pointing out their brilliance? Or are we asking students to buy books because we think they should?

Once, I perceived my professors as having the key to our futures locked inside their brains, and our task as students was to complete the puzzle that allowed us to reap the rewards that knowledge (and, most importantly, the degrees) would bring. I see my job now as helping students find their own keys that will unlock the doors to their own pathways of knowledge (and, ultimately, their degrees). As I strive to accomplish my task, I am willing to try different methods and activities in the classroom. Understanding our current students’ needs is only one step, but perhaps the most necessary one.

This article is part of ASpect’s May 2008 issue, Values in the Classrooom.