It's springtime, which means that Princeton University Press is having its annual 50% off spring sale. From May 4th through June 9th, you can get 50% off nearly every single print, ebook, and audiobook from Princeton University Press. Just go to press.prinston.edu to get 50% off incredible books like Disneyland and the Rise of Automation. And beyond belief, how evidence shows what really works.
There's so many fantastic books. You can get an incredible deal on go to press.prinston.edu and use the code spring50. That's spring50 at press.prinston.edu. This day only lasts for a month, so go and get some books.
Hello. Thank you for joining us. We are proud to welcome you to our special series, Quality Education, brought to you by Brill, where we talk about improving our current education systems for the radically changing 21st century global society. I'm your host, Lee Jungraco.
Today we're speaking with Susanna Gonzaloza. She's a professor of psychology and education at Peli Technic of Quimbra in Portugal. Her main fields are intercultural education and art. And we're speaking with Suzanne Myhanovic.
She's a retired professor from the University of Western Ontario, where she served on the Faculty of Education. Her specialty is international education and first and second language acquisition. Their book is Pandemic Disruption and Adjustment in Higher Education. It publishes the spring.
Thank you so much to you both for joining us today. Thank you for having us. Thank you. So your introduction states the quote, the hedonism that is characterized the new generation makes us think that these students will increasingly prefer classes that provide them with immediate satisfaction rather than traditional learning contacts that were slower.
Quote, so I'm just wondering, is this a fair characterization of Gen Z given that young people in the 1920s, 60s, 70s, and other generations were also described as hedonistic? And if young people today aren't unique in that respect, then what unique challenges do they pose to universities and educators? Well, this generation or the Gen Z, they were raised during a period of abundance and mass consumption. The idea that having more is better is still typical.
And for youngsters, they believe that all your wishes can be immediately satisfied prevails over some other social values. So in this way, they are similar to millennials. But in fact, there is an idea, a research tells us that maybe they are less hedonistic than their predecessors. So what are their main characteristics?
Of course, they are the result of historical period. And they also are people who live in a certain moment of history, having a certain age, which has an impact, of course. So their characteristics are now, they are more entrepreneur. With them, it's all about technology and also globalization.
They were raised in times where technology is there in all the areas of our life. So they can have access to information whenever they need it. And this makes them look for immediate gratification. So this is one of the characteristics that also millennials have, which is in patience.
They need the answers immediately. They cannot spend lots of time waiting for an answer. And this is the result of having access to easily to information. They are financially focused.
So they want to develop skills that will help them have success in their professional lives. So they are looking for knowledge information that is of practical use, that is irrelevant, that will help them achieve their goals. In this way, they are more competitive than some other generations before them. They also seem to be more independent in terms of opinions searching for the things they need for their lives.
And they are more independent as learners. Yeah, so these characteristics make them special students when we think of our students in higher education nowadays. I don't know if there's one that wants to add something to these ideas. I'm sure.
Yeah, I totally agree with what Susanna is saying. And I think from the question, the operative term that we're looking at there is this immediate satisfaction. And technology has made that a reality. And so, of course, the students do expect immediate satisfaction.
And that proposes certain challenges for higher education institutions, because you find when you're teaching courses online, for example, the students expect immediate responses. They expect the instructors to be available 24-7. And this is stressful for instructors. However, I think we have to adjust, and we are adjusting.
And another thing I'd like to mention is that we assume that this generation is very media savvy and very technologically savvy. But that is not always the case. They're very good with social media, and communicating with their friends over social media and on their smartphones. But they're not necessarily adept at interacting in higher education courses and classes.
And so this too is an issue for higher education in that we need to be able to prepare them and help them so that they can take advantage of the courses that are now offered online and on digital platforms. So that's what I would have to say about this. And so on a related note, as we're talking about, maybe slower forms of education that Gen Z might be a little bit resistant to, has the depth of the lecture been greatly exaggerated? I am not sure what we can say about that.
In fact, lecturing has to do with the traditional way of communication, which is verbal communication in face-to-face situations. That's how we transmit our ideas, how we receive ideas from other people, dialogue is made of these moments where we express our thoughts to other people. And lecturing has to do with these literal and traditional way of communication. We are used to this situation when somebody who we take as an authority in a certain subject tells us about information structure, organized information in such a way that we can understand it.
So, yeah, I don't think lecture will finish because of these relationships with the traditional of communication. But in fact, it was already different before the pandemic. The lecture was changing with the add-off technologies like microphones, a PowerPoint, multimedia video, some debating between topics, questioning. So, all these methods can be combined in such a way that it makes the classroom lively circumstance for teaching and learning.
And many lecturers already use these additional methods to transmit ideas to the students. So, no lecture, like a monologue, one, two, three hours of a monologue, that will disappear, I'm sure, because these young generations cannot be patient to this kind of communication. But in the classroom, a mix of technologies, methodologies, and lecturing can be sustainable even with these generation, yeah, that is possible. Besides, when these young people, they like very much video, like YouTube, as a medium for learning, they look for a documentary and many film video to learn special things.
And many of these videos that they find on YouTube are lectures, and they like it. But they also expect the lecturer to be somehow entertaining them. They expect a very professional way of communication. And that is the thing.
Lecturers need to develop these kinds of skills to be more motivating, more entertaining, let's say, between coma and to communicate the ideas in a way that is more similar to what students see in the television and kick talk and the social networks. Yeah, I think that's something we need to learn how to be more motivated with our work and way of communication, our styles of communication. If I could just add, I think we'd have this issue comes up in our book and there was one chapter of the call the death of the lecture where the author indeed says, well, the lecture is actually the quintessential part of the university experience. But he reminds us that it isn't just anymore the stage on the stage transmitting his or her wisdom to a captive audience.
But in fact, the lecture has already started to be adapted to be more interactive and to include the audience as well. And this, I think, is needed. On the other hand, some of our other authors remind us that being a lecturer is part of the identity of many instructors. And so to shift from the person transmitting their wisdom to a knowledge facilitator is a bit of a step for them to make, not an easy one.
And so this is something that instructors, or some instructors, anyway, are going to have to adjust their methods of delivery and their image of themselves, actually, as instructors in this new digital world of education. I'm wondering, do that any of the adjustments made by higher education administrations in the wake of the pandemic allowed humanities and applied sciences to maintain their integrity? What this crisis teaches us or reinforces, at least the idea, is that we humans are so creative. And we can always find solutions in order to get back to the balance that we had before the crisis.
So we are always looking for balance. And I think we did that with our creative ideas, with experiments, with different dialogue to among peers all over the world. We were talking about the challenges posed by the pandemic and especially the lockdown, and how to keep teaching and learning moving. And with these experiments, some of them failed, but many of them were really successful.
We could maintain the integrity and of course, many things change. But for instance, with the use of technologies, these platforms for online teaching, even if it's emergency online teaching, we could simulate situations that we are used to have only in the classroom and in the campus. And now with these platforms, we can discuss ideas. We can have, for instance, we do have these simultaneous rooms and then we can simulate the group work that we have in the classroom.
So, yeah, many things can be done, even if we are in this moment of distance learning and trying to make it easier possible and accomplish our goals. Yeah, I would agree. I think that there are pluses and minuses to this. It's amazing that Susanna noted the way we've been able to adapt, use our imagination and our creativity to develop the technology so that we can simulate a more immediate experience for people.
However, I think that also shows that people in the back of their mind are still thinking, well, this is what we're doing. But eventually we want to return to face to face. And I think that is why what probably will happen is a blended kind of situation. And certainly for applied studies that require things like a practicum or lab work and that sort of thing, it can, to a certain extent, be achieved through virtual learning.
But that's not always possible, nor is it available all over yet. So, I think everybody is hoping that we can return to some kind of blended learning where the parts of learning that require face to face on-hand experience will be possible, whereas other parts of learning that can be done very well digitally online will probably continue like that. So, I think we're looking at a blended kind of study for higher education in the future. I would also like to note that for humanities, it's interesting that changes were already being made that what you call the flipped classroom in language studies, for example, is now becoming quite popular, so that instead of having the professor lecturing and presenting and then the students going home and doing their exercises and practicing, now it's quite common that the professor's lecture is put online and the students look at that at home first and then come to class and are therefore given more time to actually practice their language, discuss their issues with the professor.
But that, as you see, includes a blended type of learning with both a digital part and a face to face part. So, we can only hope that in future, we'll be able to return to something of that nature. So, obviously, when we look at the pandemic, everyone's mental health, no matter whether profession has really been hit by this, how would you assess teachers' overall well-being during the pandemic? What to say about that?
This has been difficult times for everybody, and we had to mix personal lives with professional lives with these online teaching. Many teachers had to develop in a short space of time. They had to develop skills that they didn't feel they were very, they didn't have well-developed, like with these technologies. So, this is very stressful.
And of course, the overall well-being will be reduced in such under such circumstances, so that happened to all professionals and of course, to teachers as well. Anyway, I think that even if burnout is higher in certain professions like teachers, then in other professions, because of these continuous exposure with the people, teachers are working in front of other people. So, if they fail, it will be notized by many people. And burnout and levels of stress are common among these professionals.
The fact is that they also develop a certain kind of resilient. Teachers are resilient. And they are, I think, creative. It's a profession that demands you to be somehow creative, to find solutions, innovative ways to deal with situations, because they are, every day, they are exposed to novelty and situations.
They had not lived beforehand. So, stress has been there all the time. Fear, disappointment, all these negative emotions and feelings have been accompanying these professionals during this time. But also, some situations happen that help survive, let's say, like cooperation among colleagues.
I think we had more than ever meetings, online meetings where teachers were talking about their fears and the problems with the students and asking for help in order to solve the problems they were facing. And there was cooperation, there was solidarity. And this is really interesting phenomenon. After the first time, especially when we had the lockdown, after the first times of a punishment and fear, there was a raise of solidarity, communication, and also the institutions, the universities developed some, let's say, emergency services to help not only students, but also teachers.
In our book, some others mentioned that. And this support was really important to help teachers. But it is possible that many were suffering from high levels of stress and, well, of course, it is now difficult times. And you have to adjust, and the crisis is there, and you have to deal at the same time with many uncertainties and problems to solve.
So, yeah, I would say that well-being and mental health has suffered a lot in these things. Yeah, if I could just add, one of our chapters is called overall it was okay. And I think that that sort of captures the well-being of the instructors and that they survived. And interestingly enough, a lot of the stress and anxiety that they experienced when courses first went online were because they were unfamiliar with using the technology and very unsure and frustrated when it didn't work and not sure if their students were actually there when they were supposed to be.
But as they gained skill with using the technology, their well-being grew. And of course, this was helped by these meetings, support meetings with other colleagues and that sort of thing. On the other hand, this new approach of putting everything or most everything online has put some positions in jeopardy because you maybe don't need as many instructors as you did before. So, some have found that their positions have become precarious and that of course has contributed to their stress.
I think students too have experienced anxiety at being at the isolation of being at home, not having peers, this generation relies very heavily on their peers and whether they can maintain that support is a moot point right now. But I think that what universities are doing, they're aware of this. And so they are putting in place support systems to support faculty and students. And I know in my university, we keep getting these messages.
If you feel you need to talk to somebody, please contact us. And so they do have teams of people into kind of support when the anxiety gets too high. But certainly it's been a very stressful time, particularly for people working from home who possibly also have children going to school that they're monitoring their children's at home learning, running their household, trying to do their usual job as instructors. So it has been very difficult to manage all this.
And so well-being has suffered. But in other ways, as you get used to it, people are adaptable. And so as they get better at using the technologies and making use of the support systems that are available, I think their well-being starts to improve a little bit too. I guess if you can speak from your own experience, as an educator, you mentioned colleagues getting those messages about if you need support.
Are you finding that you were your colleagues are actually using any of those systems that are in place or are educators hesitant at all to use those? I'm not sure about what the culture is in the university system when it comes to mental health and asking for help or using the help that's already there. I think that usually university teachers are doing the sole problems by themselves. This is a profession that demands us to be somehow individualistic, not in terms of research, but when it comes to the way people who many university teachers start to organize and decide on how to approach the curriculum by themselves.
And we are not so used to talk with colleagues about problems such as difficulties in the classroom, weeks to then so our problems of discipline or not understanding which would be the best method to approach a certain content. So decisions are made by ourselves. And under that, the crisis like this one, we can fail more easily. We have more questions and consult.
And of course, talking to colleagues or asking for help would be natural, but it's not so natural for such a group of professionals. So maybe many colleagues kept the problems for themselves. But as I already mentioned, there was a kind of solidarity movement among colleagues and a lot of discussion on how these crisis brings or adds problems to our work with students. And solutions have been shared and ideas and problems.
And maybe professionals were not became less shy about sharing their own problems. This is my guess. And I'm talking also not only from what I from our book, but also from the experience with colleagues, not only in Portugal, but in other groups I belong to. And we discussed a lot these kind of similar problems and fears.
Yeah, maybe for the first time in the history of university, teaching, we discussed this very openly, this kind of problems that teaching and learning goes to us. We accepted that we are fragile. Yeah, I would like to add that we are social beings. And I think as professors, well, I for one, I enjoy being a part of a community of scholars where I can discuss with my peers' issues.
However, that doesn't necessarily lead to discussion about particular problems I'm having with technology or course delivery or something like that. So it's a kind of a mixed bag. But I think that is why the higher institutions are trying to offer support because they realize that professors and instructors, they need to communicate. They need to share their ideas.
And so they have to offer the opportunity for them to do that. And I think they are trying to do that without overwhelming us with too many Zoom meetings, which can be also very stressful overall. Well, thank you so much to you both for sitting down with me today. It's been a great conversation.
Thank you for having us. Suzanne Gonzales and Suzanne Myhanovich, their book is Pandemic Disruption and Adjustment in Higher Education. It publishes this spring. You are listening to the Humanities Matter podcast.
You can find more podcast episodes on Apple Podcast, Spotify and Google Podcast.