By Kenneth Ardon
Economics

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 Krebs’ response.

“A Vision of Students Today” presents comments and complaints from a group of students about their experiences in college. The students raise issues ranging from the relatively mundane (college is too expensive) to questions involving the relevance of traditional classrooms and instructional practices.

When I watched the video the first time, my initial reaction was largely annoyance. The video struck me as whining by students with a sense of entitlement. Despite my irritation, I watched the video again to consider its message more carefully.

The students make several interrelated points:

• Large, impersonal classrooms are bad.
• Collaboration through technology is good.
• Technology alone is not a solution.

My list oversimplifies the issues, but each has merit. Few people would argue that large lectures are the ideal teaching method. Of course, this critique is hardly novel. While lectures sometimes get a bad rap-a good speaker can be informative and interesting-more engaging discussions and active classes often can stimulate students and create better learning opportunities. Sitting passively in class, or, as the video phrases it, having students “follow” the information, may be less effective.

The video provides the example of online collaboration as a better alternative to a traditional classroom. The students point out the benefits of working as a group, but their comments in the video mention many activities that reduce face-to-face interaction. They Facebook (if I can use that as a verb), text, and browse the internet, all without speaking to another person. In this way students today are different; they do not interact in the same ways as previous generations. I am not a sociologist or psychologist and cannot speculate about the implications of this behavior, but classroom interaction may become necessary for students to work on communications skills.

Collaboration and group projects can be useful, and the students’ online collaboration for the video is an example of the potential benefits of communications technology. The major advances that touch our lives-the computer, the internet, cell phones, etc.-facilitate sharing information at lower cost. Information technology opens opportunities and allows teaching in ways that may have been impossible in the past.

In this sense, classrooms and teaching should adapt-not because today’s students are different, but because we have the opportunity to use technology to increase our productivity and to become better and more effective teachers. At the same time, it is a large and unwarranted leap from the observation that technology could be helpful to the suggestion that traditional classes are obsolete or irrelevant.

Changing technology often offers incremental opportunities; the group collaboration on the video could have been done on a smaller scale using pen and paper; the technology just makes it easier and perhaps more fun. Instead of replacing regular classrooms, technology often will supplement them. As a simple example, the use of remote “clickers” can improve even a giant lecture, allowing professors to question students and identify misconceptions and providing students with immediate feedback. The technology in this case enhances the classroom experience without fundamentally changing it.

Collaborative work does not guarantee success. Two hundred students worked on the script for the video, but what did they learn? Would some of them have learned more had the time been spent in class discussing the material? Cooperative learning can take place in the classroom or in cyberspace, as can bad teaching. Ultimately, a good professor makes the difference, something that technology cannot replace.

As the video points out, technology is not a panacea. Can Salem State say conclusively that its laptop initiative has had a significant, positive impact on students? More importantly, is the impact worth the cost? I do not know the answers to these questions, but I doubt that anyone else does either.

At the beginning of this essay, I mentioned that the video initially aggravated me. I mentioned my visceral reaction because it is relevant to the question of how the classroom is or should be changing. My irritation is caused by my perception that the students refuse to accept responsibility for their education. The students gripe that they are busy (“I am a multi-tasker / (I have to be)”), but they claim to spend nine hours a day online, chatting, watching TV, and on the phone. They are unhappy that their professors do not know their names, but they do not do the reading, do not attend class, and probably do not go to office hours. They protest that the readings are irrelevant to their lives and that taking simple exams will not prepare them for the future. I do not doubt that they feel that way, but if students were free to choose the curriculum, which classes would survive as relevant?

We should adapt teaching methods to take advantage of new opportunities, but all the collaboration and technology in the world will not overcome a lack of motivation and effort. Today’s students may have different social rituals, but this does not mean that the educational system must be transformed. Success at work and in society requires the ability to think critically, to solve problems, and to communicate-skills that a liberal arts education is meant to cultivate and skills that can be developed in many ways. Educational methods can be improved, but I do not believe that students from generation X, Y, Z and whatever comes next are fundamentally different from students of earlier generations.

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