THE UCM STUDENT

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THE UCM STUDENT

• September 4, 2007

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Meet the Millennials

• Never born in a world without the internet
• Always cooked their popcorn in a microwave
• Never watched television without a remote control
• Think Kansas, Chicago, America and Alabama are
  places, not musical groups
• Ability to email the President of the United
  States since the first grade

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Seven Core Traits

• Special
• Sheltered
• Confident
• Team Oriented
• Conventional
• Pressured
• Achieving

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Social

• Feel close to their parents
• They let everyone into their world, usually have
  three to five friends, but dozens to hundreds of
  online friends
• Respectful of norms and institutions
• Only trust authority who they feel have earned
  it, place more trust in their peers than in
  authority figures
• Heavily structured and scheduled, dont do well
  with idle time

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Baby on Board Generation

• They are more protected, the wanted children
• They come from an era of no losers, only the
  winning-challenged
• Collaboration vs. competition
• Attitude that they are entitled
• They regard themselves as collectively special
• The most watched-over generation in history
• Never ridden a bike without a helmet
• Never ridden in a car without a seat belt

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Always Connected

• Texting, instant messaging, podcasting, MySpace,
  Facebook, gaming
• 81 of teens either own or use a cell phone
• They are online a lot-up to three hours a day
  doing homework, shopping, viewing personal web
  pages and blogs, YouTube
• Email is a communication medium of last resort

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What They Expect

• Understand that students and their parents are
  consumers who actively compare programs and make
  choices
• 24/7/365 customer service culture-always on,
  always connected, anytime, anywhere, anyplace
• Cyber service and instant response
• Cash-less campus-use debit/credit card for
  everything
• Millennials accept authority and respect
  institutions with this comes a zero tolerance
  for institutional failure

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• According to The Millennial Values research
  study conducted in 2006 by N, the nighttime
  network for teens and a programming are of MTV
  network, the issues that concern them the most
  are
• Personal Safety
• Crime/Violence
• Terrorism/War
• Stress
• Money

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Stress Out

• Another issue that ranked high in the study was
  stress
• Nearly half feel their stress level is very
  high to high
• They believe they are dealing with a more
  competitive, stressful and complicated world than
  their parents
• The greatest source of stress is their future
  including getting a job and making money

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Worried about

• A college degree is the new high school diploma,
  to be considered for any of kind of good job
  you have got to have one
• Gone are the days of cheap tuition, grants and
  scholarships and a booming economy to provide
  good paying jobs when they graduate
• Rising college costs
• Financial aid has shifted from grants to loans
• Housing and food are more expensive
• Lots of debt (education and credit card)

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• Understanding where newer generations are coming
  from allows us to
• Attract and Retain
• Communicate and Engage
• Provide better student services
• Bring out their strengths
• Educate
• Help them prepare for future

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• Lets Bring This a Little Closer to Home

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Some important metrics

• 84
• 50
• 68
• 26
• 49

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Some other important numbers to keep in mind

• 187.35
• 374.70
• 235.65
• 471.30
• 18,594
• 24,050
• 142

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Psychographics/Demographics

• UNDERGRADUATE POPULATION
• 89 Missouri Resident
• 9 Minority/International
• Top 1/3 of High School Graduating Class
• 22.2 ACT Score
• Ave. HS GPA 3.3
• 60 reside 100 mile radius from Warrensburg
• 55 Female
• Ave. Age of UG 22.6
• 16.9 over the age of 24
• 55 of first year students indicated family
  incomes 60K

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What The Freshmen Tell Us

• 82 of freshmen indicate studying 5 hours or less
  per week in high school (76)
• 55 planning on earning Masters degree or higher
• Most frequently cited reasons for attending
  college get a better job (73), to be able to
  make more money (72.5), to get training for a
  specific career (74.6)
• Reasons such as Learn things that interest me,
  To gain a general education and appreciation of
  ideas and To make me a more cultured person
  were cited significantly less frequently when
  compared to survey respondents at other 4 year
  public institutions

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• Millennial learners CAN change their attitudes
  and behaviors about learning. BUT, faculty and
  staff must help them do this.
• Saundra McGuire Ph.D.
• Director, Center for Academic
  Success
• Louisiana State University

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Students Do Not Understand What is Required To Be
Successful in College

• Entering students, in particular, seem to
  underestimate the requirements of courses and the
  amount of work required to achieve better grades
• Survey of Faculty 2002

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A Possible Disconnect?

• Faculty Learning and a college
• education is the goal
• Students College/education is only
• the means to achieve their
  goals (e.g. job, career, values, lifestyles).

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A Teaching and Learning Disconnect

• Most faculty exhibit a teaching style (abstract
  reflective) that not only is opposite, but
  antagonistic to students learning styles
  (concrete active)
• Schroeder, 2000

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• What You Can Do

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Understand Retention Movement

• Successful retention programs encompass virtually
  everything an institution does to improve the
  quality of student life and learning

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• Retention should not be an institutional goal but
  rather a by-product of improved educational
  programs and services to students.

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Tinto on Faculty Role in Retention

• To be effective, retention efforts must be seen
  as part and parcel of institutional educational
  functioning, a responsibility that is shared by
  all members of the institution, in particular the
  faculty. The long-term success of retention
  efforts ultimately rests on the shoulders of the
  faculty and their willingness to see that goal as
  their own. Student learning is central to
  student persistence the conditions that foster
  student learning are also those that promote
  student persistence

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We have vastly overrated students abilities in
these key areas

• Learning the norms of the campus culture
• Finding a niche
• Reaching out and then putting down roots
• Transferring success behaviors from other
  settings
• Putting on blinders/developing focus
• Resisting peer pressure
• Compartmentalizing work/family pressures
• Exhibiting the classroom and study habits of
  successful students
• Asking for help
• Building relationships with teachers

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Ideas for Engaging Millennials

• Be authentic
• Plan around teams-its about building a community
• Build on positive attitudes
• Use real student voices to tell real stories
• Assume they are smart and let them know you think
  so (high standards/expectations)
• Create tools and easy to use functionality that
  allows them to create and share their own
  content, such as photos, videos
• Set high standards of performance conduct
• From Jeff Cufaude (2000). Millennials
  Fraternities Sororities.

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Teaching Methods

• Some relatively simple changes in teaching
  methods can produce significant gains in learning
  for college students. The researchers reported
  that college students do their best in courses
  that include frequent checkpoints such as
  quizzes, tests and oral exams. They also thrive
  when they do at least some of their studying in
  small groups.
• The Harvard Assessment Seminars
• Exploring with Student and Faculty About
• Teaching, Learning and Student Life, 1990

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UCM Instructional Effectiveness
Satisfactionvs.Four Year Public
Satisfaction Level Lower than 4-Year Publics at
.001 level
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Role of Teaching and Learning

• No matter what the organization or programmatic
  efforts are to set higher standards and to more
  closely evaluate educational outcomes, the
  unquestionable pivotal role in the educational
  system has been-and will always be-the teacher.
• Dr. John Rouche

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What Students Say About Effective Faculty

• I learned a lot in this course
• The instructor was willing to help me learn
• The instructor cared about me as an individual

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Nine Specific Ways Faculty Can Aid and Abet
Student Success

• Embrace undergraduates and their learning
• Set and maintain high expectations for student
  performance
• Clarify what students need to do to succeed
• Use engaging pedagogical approaches appropriate
  for course objectives and students abilities and
  learning styles
• Build on students knowledge, abilities and
  talents
• Provide meaningful feedback to students

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9 continued

• Weave diversity into the curriculum including
  out-of-class assignments
• Make time for students
• Hold students accountable for taking their share
  of the responsibility for their learning
• Kinzie, J. (2005). Promoting student success
  What faculty members can do (Occasional Paper No.
  6). Bloomington, Indiana Indiana University
  Center for Postsecondary Research

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Facilitating Faculty-Student Contact Through
Student-Centered Learning

• Carefully monitor student progress and attendance
  through frequent feedback
• Submit mid-term, final grades and book orders in
  a timely manner
• Keep scheduled office hours and be available to
  students
• Call/email frequently absent students
• Be a referral agent when/where appropriate
• Participate fully in the institutions early
  alert program

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Retention is about human interaction

• Institutions which consciously reach out to
  establish personal bonds among students, faculty,
  and staff and which emphasize frequent and
  rewarding contacts outside the classroom are
  those which most successfully retain students.
  Such interaction is the single strongest
  predictor of student persistence

-Vincent Tinto
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Thanks

• Dr. Matt Melvin
• Assistant Provost for Enrollment Management
• 660.543.4810
• melvin_at_ucmo.edu