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From: Beth McMurtrie
Subject: Teaching: Connecting with Gen Z through course design
This week I:
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This week, I:
Reaching Gen Z
We’ve been writing a lot lately about the challenges of reaching and teaching this generation of students. They are an anxious bunch who need more structure and incentives than many professors are accustomed to providing. So naturally a thread on X (formerly Twitter) by Sadé Lindsay, an assistant professor of public policy and sociology at Cornell University, grabbed my attention:
“Okay here’s my current assessment of Gen Z students,” she wrote. “Overall, they are so freaking bright! Once informed, they ask so many great questions. But my god do you have to incentivize them to develop the necessary skills to thrive in college & life.
“Unfortunately, Gen X as parents likely did too much handholding to ensure their Gen Z babies got into the best colleges for a prosperous future. That means I gotta teach and incentivize the very basics.”
Lindsay went on to describe the structures she has put in place for her course, to include reading notes; in-class polls; a carefully organized Canvas site that links to readings, lectures, and assignments; and a course communication tool that allows her to answer questions and post comments for the entire class to see. She even runs AMAs (ask me anything) for each quiz and assignment.
I wanted to learn how Lindsay came up with this design, so I caught up with her by phone. I wondered, first of all, if any of this came naturally to her. After all, many professors did not experience teaching in this way when they were students. And some resist breaking down large assignments into smaller steps or teaching critical-thinking skills, believing that students should already have the tools and motivation needed to succeed in college.
She views things differently.
“This is the next generation. These are the people that I’m going to depend on to lead us,” she said. “I see it as one part being my duty. They don’t have the skills that I think they need. I have 16 weeks with them and I can try to do what I can. It’s not that I have to change any content, really. It’s just making my assignment be useful in many ways.”
Lindsay, who is in her second year of teaching, pointed to two things that influenced her approach. One is that she has ADHD, so she understands the challenges inherent in keeping track of multiple courses and assignments. And because of her ADHD, it helps to streamline communication. By using Ed Discussion, a tool that she links to her Canvas site, she cuts down on individual emails from students. And by centralizing their questions and her answers, all can benefit. Students can even earn extra credit by responding to other people’s questions.
Second, she said, as a sociologist she thinks about the environments in which her students have been raised. That includes a lot of close attention by parents toward ensuring their success. She may need to teach them the skills that foster independence, including the ability to fail and bounce back. That’s one reason why her course includes a lot of low-stakes assignments. “They have grown up with everything so high stakes,” she said. “Part of learning is you fail and you figure out what you did wrong. And you learn how to build off of that.”
That said, she did not come into teaching understanding all of this. She adjusted along the way.
Lindsay teaches a course that is both large — 120 students — and complex: “Race, Racism and Public Policy.” The first time she taught it, last fall, she was surprised to find that students needed incentives to do the reading. So she introduced reading notes this year, and a portion of students’ attendance grade includes submitting the notes before class.
She points out that these changes benefit her as well. The reading notes allow her to see what questions students have about the assignment. She can then adjust her lecture accordingly. And students appreciate that she is reading and responding to their questions.
And that ties into another important point she makes about her students. Yes, they might need more structure. But overall, they are really sharp. A course teaching about race and racism is complicated, but she has found it “refreshing” to see how aware students are of the issues. “They get some of the basics and I’m able to just build off of all of that knowledge that they already seem to have.”
Have you changed your course design in the last year or so to address some of the differences you’re seeing in Generation Z? If so, write to me at beth.mcmurtrie@chronicle.com and your example may appear in a future newsletter.
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I was lucky enough to be Jack’s first guest, where we talked about my recent story on the decline in students’ ability and willingness to read: Is This the End of Reading? I described to him how I wasn’t at first convinced this was a new problem. Then I started doing some reporting and learned how much had changed for this generation of students, both inside of school and out.
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ICYMI
Thanks for reading Teaching. If you have suggestions or ideas, please feel free to email us at beth.mcmurtrie@chronicle.com or beckie.supiano@chronicle.com.
— Beth
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