BY BILL BERGMAN
Guest blogger Bill Bergman is Instructor of Marketing at the University of Richmond’s Robins School of Business.
Students in the college classroom are growing much quieter these days. Technology is robbing them of self-assured verbal skills displayed by previous generations. They also live in dread of giving the wrong answer in class that could tarnish their digital image or hurt their chances for a dream internship. Every time students actually contribute to the classroom conversation, it usually starts with a hesitantly raised hand and an uncomfortable qualifier like, “You know, I’d just like to say…”
It is easy to blame the use of laptops, smart phones, and social media for the emerging “quiet revolution’ in higher education. But, there are other forces at work as well.
Top companies today start recruiting students during the first semester of their sophomore year for their shadowing, externship, and summer internship programs. Many 19-year olds now enter the classroom fearful to express themselves and worried that a bad grade could end their dreams of working on Wall Street.
This fear intensifies as students become upperclassmen and realize to they might have made a high stacks mistake by picking the wrong major. Without a lot of career counseling around to help, they live in a quiet desperation on the path to graduation.
Sometimes students go silent because they are downright bored. They live in a high tech, social media world in which they are chauffeured around by Uber, buy most of their products on Amazon, and have meals delivered by Blue Apron. They have a hard time getting enthused in a classroom with 5-year old technology, reading a textbook in its 15th edition, and listening to a 50+-year old instructor who is from another time.
The trend toward a quiet classroom can be reversed with a few simple proven techniques:
- Instead of freaking students out on day one with a syllabus that resembles a legal document, spend the first day of class explaining they are in a safe environment where it is acceptable to make mistakes. They don’t hear that often from educators, administrators, parents, corporate recruiters, or their friends.
- Realize students have limited verbal skills and encourage them to speak no matter how much they mumble or hide behind their laptops. A few compliments, especially early on, go a long way in helping them build confidence.
- When no one responds to a question early in the semester, let the room go silent for a couple of minutes. Everyone is usually so uncomfortable they begin to realize there is a problem that needs attention. Enlist their support in the solution. Students always have a couple of good tips on how to get more people involved.
- Go slower when covering material in class and give students the chance to respond more on selected topics. Sometimes they are so engrossed in absorbing everything they feel intimidated responding to a question they haven’t had any time to think about. This is not a spontaneous generation confident in their speaking ability.
Administrators can also take steps to alleviate the growing silence in the classroom:
- Make classrooms look and feel warmer and more inviting. When it comes time to redecorate, call in the space designers from Apple, Facebook, and Google. Current stadium seating combined with muted colors is intimidating. Make the classroom a warmer environment and maybe students won’t be as scared to speak.
- Commit to technology that is current. It shouldn’t take five minutes for the classroom computer to turn on. Outdated equipment sends the wrong signal to a technology hyped student population. Make it easy for professors to SKYPE in outside speakers or to conduct conference calls in class.
- Work with corporations to reduce their aggressiveness in recruiting students before they have the maturity to select a profession. Also, hire more career service professionals who can counsel students and help them realize there are other options should they grow bored with their current major.
Colleges and universities face so many daunting issues that the emergence of quieter students in the classroom is something that won’t get much attention. It is too bad because this student silence is a symptom of just how disconnected student life styles are from the most important product higher education has to offer.
Professors, administrators, companies that recruit on campus, and career service personnel should acknowledge the problem and work together to find solutions. Unless there is an effort to bring back the vibrancy and excitement of classroom interaction between professors and their students, higher education is ripe for the same kind of disruption that other industries have experienced. Technology, in the form of online instruction, will reduce costs so much that it will become harder to justify the high price of a classroom experience that is characterized by students too afraid to speak.
