List suggests students becoming impatient
With every incoming college class comes a new perspective on education and life in general, which is represented through the Mindset List, co-created by Rob Nief and Tom McBride of Beloit College in Wisconsin.
In their speech and discussion with USU faculty and staff, McBride and Nief shared their most recently published Mindset List for the Class of 2014, in order to help these employees effectively connect with and understand the students at hand. McBride, who is also an English professor at Beloit, said “generational change is fraught with wounds” and the Class of 2014 is wounded with the inability to write in cursive as well as the impression that e-mail is not a fast enough way to communicate.
It is important that professors and other university student mentors educate their students about the past, so they may understand the world from a different generation. This includes improving general skills, such as formal communication, which many now lack due to technology, he said.
“I have found students really lack a sense of context …. They just don’t understand some elementary distinctions,” McBride said.
Today’s college students are hopeful as well as worrisome to their professors and parents, Nief said, because they have grown up with a progressive attitude toward race and gender, they understand they must find a way to cool the heating planet, improve health care options and urge competition in the U.S.
McBride said he has sensed tension in classrooms during his research for this year’s Mindset List. Students think their professors are less intelligent than they are, and professors see their students as “ghoulishly stupid,” he said.
He has also observed that parents latch onto their children more in recent years, especially while attempting to prepare them for college. Lisa Hancock, program administrator for new student orientation, said she agrees with McBride because she has witnessed an increasing number of phone calls about college entrance made by students’ parents.
“Sometimes the parent does everything for the student,” Hancock said. “I think these incoming students are just as capable, but maybe don’t have the experience they need to be at a university.”
Kirsten Nelson, a freshman majoring in environmental science, said the only thing her parents did to help her in her preparation for college was show her the USU website.
Though Nelson said she felt well prepared for college, she has observed many of her friends struggling to attach files onto emails and witnessed many of them fail the Information CIL test more than once.
“It’s kind of concerning, but I feel to each their own,” Nelson said. “As long as technology keeps on going we are just going to have to keep adapting.”
Many students are not used to minor tasks such as talking on the phone, because Facebook and text messaging give them alternative ways to communicate, she said. She said she also noticed USU students do not check their e-mails very often because they either have multiple e-mail accounts or are using more immediate means to communicate.
“These students need to learn to be patient to foster scholarship,” Nief said.
McBride said students want instant gratification in their schooling, because they are used to receiving instant answers through technology.
Britni Manning, a freshman majoring in psychology, said the way technology gives people instant gratification makes it addicting, and though many say they are not addicted to it, they are. She said she has noticed technology hinder her and her classmates’ ability to acquire needed research skills.
“The Internet is the biggest resource and people don’t know how to cite sources in textbooks or even how to look for the sources,” Manning said.
Students are frustrated by assignments that cannot be done promptly or lack intricate directions, McBride said.
“Students need to live with some anxiety, some ambiguity and some boredom with class assignments,” McBride said. “It helps to tell the students that there are no right or wrong answers, just better or worse answers.”
The Mindset List began in 1998 and has been updated every year so professors can better understand their students’ lifestyle and levels of comprehension. Nief gave examples of previous lists and said one point he made on the list published in 2002 was that students only knew Michael Jackson to be a white man.
The list for 2006 stated that the control-alt-delete concept was as basic as A, B, C. The Mindset Lists are posted on the website www.beloit.edu/mindset.
All of these tidbits that link students to their correlating graduating classes are information professors can study, understand and use to adjust their teaching methods to better cater to the students needs.
“This is the point: enlightenment is hard work,” McBride said. “But, we must try to get it done for ourselves and for others.”
– catherine.meidell@aggiemail.usu.edu