Successful Teaching Conference for Faculty by Faculty
In collaboration with the teaching and learning centers of Corning, Broome, and Tompkins Cortland Community Colleges, ICCD co-hosted its eighth annual Successful Teaching Conference October 26th and 27th at the Radisson Hotel in Corning, New York. With presenters discussing cutting-edge teaching theories and colleagues sharing their favorite classroom tips, this year’s STC program attracted over one hundred participants from twenty-one institutions from New York State and Connecticut.
In his keynote presentation, “Teaching the Millennials,” Stewart Brower, Coordinator of Information Management Education at the University of Buffalo Health Science Library, examined the shared experiences of parents and teachers of the Millennials (students born after 1982, also known, among other monikers, as “Generation Y”), touching on their strengths and weakness as learners, and suggesting methods of instruction that most appeal to them. Millennials, Brower said, are very closely watched over by their “helicopter parents,” have a sense of entitlement, and have great faith in technology--technology “can never, and will never, hurt them, and is always their friend,” as evidenced by their willingness to post their most private thoughts on MySpace and Facebook.
Millennials are also goal-oriented and very positive about their future; they believe that if they work hard enough they can get whatever they want. While they enjoy working in teams more than previous generations, they still want to be treated as if they are special and insist on being listened to. They are used to being able to customize their technology to meet their preferences, and expect to have similar choices in every aspect of their lives.
These can all be positive traits, except that Milleninals tend to demand that the curriculum and the rules bend to meet their needs, even sometimes going as far as threatening litigation if they don’t get what they want. “Millennials have been raised,” he said, “to work the system.” They are more likely than prior generations to argue with their professors, and civility in the classroom was noted by many in the audience to be a problem: students email their teacher on a Sunday and come to class irate if the teacher didn’t get back to them until Monday; during lessons they IM, check their phone messages and eat loud food like potato chips.
And while Millennials are technology-savy, they are not necessarily information-savy. They tend to believe that everything on the Internet is true, and they often lack the skills to evaluate information. They tend to be visual, multi-media learners, and resist reading things they don’t want to read. A challenge for their professors is to help them become better learners not just in their individual areas of strength but in all modalities.
The evening before the workshops, Frank Pastizzo of Warm up the Workplace inspired the program participants to improve the quality of their lives by supporting and inspiring each other at work. In order for people to be productive and empowered in the workplace, he explained, they must have a sense of belonging, a sense of freedom, a sense of power—and a sense of fun. “You’re all teachers, you work hard, you’re on the spot every day,” he said. “I think you deserve to be entertained for a while.” With well-told stories from his rich experience in several human services fields, as well as impromptu musical performances and demonstrations, Pastizzo moved his audience to put their work and their lives into a more human perspective.
The following day, workshop sessions explored topics such as “Incorporating Service Learning into an Online Course,” “Understanding and Working Effectively with ESL Students in Mainstream College Courses,” and “Integrating Multimedia into the Teaching and Learning Process.” The conference ended in its traditional manner with “GIFTS”: Gathering Ideas for Teaching Success, where participants shared a favorite teaching tip and received many ideas in return to bring back to their campuses.
Next year’s Successful Teaching Conference will be November 15-16, 2007, at the Binghamton Regency Hotel, Binghamton, New York.
