It’s a question facing nearly every industry today—how do we keep pace with technological advancements and the impact they have on the expectations of the people we serve? In the academic world, technologies such as custom learning experiences, virtual and augmented reality, and instant access to almost unlimited information resources are common examples of the kinds of advances students have come to expect from their educational experiences.
This is probably most true of Generation Z students—the generation born roughly between the mid-1990s and early 2000s. As this generation enters the higher education age bracket, education providers will quickly learn that communication channels and methods of information delivery which have worked in the past will not meet the expectations of these students in the future.
Generation Z has been referred to by many names: the iGeneration, Post-Millenials, and Gen Tech, reflecting technology’s pervasive influence on this generation as a whole. These are young people who grew up using smart phones and tablets and have known social media for most of their lives. A 2018 paper by Anna Dolot of Cracow University of Economics found that 56 percent of Generation-Z aged respondents agreed that “new technologies seem to be part of their day-to-day environment.”
Millennials, and the generations that came before them, became accustomed to using technologies such as social media, online data analysis tools, and speech-to-text software during their teens or adult years. However, the Generation Z population hasn’t experienced life without these tools and technologies.
For lecturers, instructional designers, or university staff members at any level, communicating with tech-literate students of all generations is crucial for student retention and success. To meet students’ communication needs, we need to engage, appreciate, and connect with students if we are to keep them on track. Let’s look at what this means for online education providers.
Connect with students
Students of higher education from all generations now expect their university courses to have some kind of online component, such as an online portal where they can review their grades and keep track of upcoming assignments. However, when the interaction between student and lecturer takes place solely online, a new set of hurdles need to be overcome. When teaching courses in-person, lecturers have the obvious advantage of direct interaction with students, where eye contact, body language, tone of voice, and facial expressions convey arguably as much information as words themselves. With online interactions, it is trickier to convey emotions and form a genuine connections between teacher and student.
To bridge this communication gap, online lecturers need to learn to use communication tools to their advantage and create truly meaningful teaching experiences. Being responsive to emails, providing regular feedback on forum comments and conversations, and making themselves available through channels such as interactive webinar sessions can help lecturers create more connectedness and trust with their students.
Engagement
Gone are the days where the lecturer is an unquestionable figure of authority dispensing knowledge like gospel. Students now have ready access to millions of sources at the click of a search button, and are more self-guided in their studies than in pre-internet days. Add to this that online students are naturally self-directed and must take more ownership of the overall learning experience.
Therefore, to effectively communicate with students who are studying purely online, we must engage, but also give a sense of freedom that allows experiences gained outside the classroom, such as from the world of work, to be brought into the online environment easily. This method of engagement is particularly apt to online courses, where students are often working while studying and can include learnings from their professional lives in their coursework, assignments, and in discussions groups with fellow students.
Methods of engaging online learners can be simple as well. Today’s best online programmes contain some kind of visual or interactive component such as lecture videos, webinars, and the gamification of lesson content in addition to textual information. These active, accessible, and easily absorbed channels of information appeal to today’s learners, both in the Generation-Z age group, and older.
Showing Appreciation
We all like to feel appreciated. In a physical classroom, lecturers can speak directly with students and show interest in what they say during discussions using body language.
Interactive Pro’s tutors and student support team are a good example of how to ensure that your students still feel appreciated and respected in the absence of a regular face-to-face instructional component. After completing an online course with one of our partner universities, students time and time again cite their tutors and the support they received during their programme as one of the main reasons the study experience was so valuable. By being accessible and genuinely helpful, online lecturers and support staff make students feel that their effort is respected and appreciated, and that their concerns are heard.
There are also a number of ways to demonstrate to online students that they bring value to a university’s wider community, and are as appreciated to the same level as on-campus students. Inviting online students to join campus-based social media groups or attend in-person events, such as graduation and networking days, acknowledges an online student as an equal participant in the university’s real-world activities.
Keeping students on track
To encourage students to keep up with their studies and feel that their efforts are meaningful, self-efficacy in their work is necessary. A comparison study by Saeed Alshahrani, Ejaz Ahmed, and Rupert Ward examining the influence of online resources on student-lecturer relationships surveyed 1,942 higher education students from Saudi Arabia, Kenya, and the United Kingdom and found that using online learning resources actually seemed to improve their academic self-confidence.
Another crucial component for student satisfaction and success is receiving effective feedback from lecturers. Anna Dolot’s 2018 survey of Generation Z participants revealed that they: “ … give feedback, but they also expect feedback and perceive the communication process as bidirectional.” Generation Z, in particular, is accustomed to receiving feedback through social media and online channels in the form of “likes” and direct comments on their thoughts and observations.
Therefore, communication channels in online education should allow for a sufficient amount of feedback of various types so that students feel noticed by lecturers, and can keep on track with their studies.
In higher education, the abundance of information online can make traditional teaching dynamics seem outdated, but these modern technologies can be used to better educate a new generation of students. Remaining relevant and using technology to aide in instruction, while still relying on the human aspect of teaching, will result in better online education experiences and success in online programmes.
