Now What? (Education and Technology in a Post COVID World)

I have always enjoyed writing.

You might even call it the Ace up my sleeve.

Even as a kid, when life became too much I would slip away and write stories about an alter ego named Chelsa Parks (yes, that spelling is correct) who went on adventures and solved her problems through her work as a scientist on a submarine and as a detective with a local agency.

What can I say? I was 12. Writing made the world my oyster.

A few years ago, I started a blog entitled “Confessions of a Workaholic” as something to keep my mind busy during the summer months during my break from teaching, but admittedly, I never gave blogging the time and energy it deserved. Thus, this semester’s blog experience was fairly new to me.

The assignment to write relevant pieces each week motivated me to attempt to create innovative framing and clever wordplay that was hopefully engaging to the few readers who visited the page (shout out to my mom and my fiancé for indulging me each week).

And I enjoyed every moment of it.

But alas, a hectic semester has now come to a close, and I am all too happy and motivated to be wrapping up projects and papers as the big finish line approaches on Friday.

The end of the semester is always a bittersweet time, especially for someone who has been an instructor since 2013. I find myself a coach, a cheerleader, a counselor, and a parent—all aside from my instructional duties of prepping finals and grading papers. The end of the semester is all about encouraging weary students to just push a little bit more and reminding them they can do it.

Mentoring, motivating, and encouraging my students are some of my favorite parts of teaching in a Higher Ed setting. Additionally, it ties in with my initial ‘why’ that began my doctoral journey: I’m determined to figure out how students learn best. Harrison and Mathuews (2022) explore this very topic.

After citing statistics about how numbers are down in university enrollment, the authors bemoan the negative aspects of life that could await students without a degree (Harrison & Mathuews, 2022). They list lower income, higher levels of unemployment, and ‘lower levels of life satisfaction;’ whereas those who complete degrees tend to have “higher income, sense of mastery, and and happiness, while maintaining lower average indicators of depression and stress” (p. 399).

Clearly, I’m the picture of health and happiness representing this statistic, but I digress…

The crux of their study, however, lies in university faculty: “we need an analysis focused on what professor behaviors help or hinder students’ academic performance” (Harrison & Mathuews, 2022, p. 399). This question inspired their qualitative study of semi-structured interviews.

I found the review of literature to be the most interesting aspect of the article, however. It details the many reasons students may struggle academically, including whether or not they are ready for college, financial concerns, mental health crises, and indecision about career direction (Harrison & Mathuews, 2022, p. 400).

But, according to the author’s research into Tinto’s Theory of Student Departure, the student-faculty relationship is the big one. Apparently, Tinto himself even refereed to it as ”the single strongest predictor of student voluntary departure” (Harrison & Mathuews, 2022, p. 400).

As I watch students survive on a steady diet caffeine and adrenaline, that’s a pretty bold statement if you ask me.

True, there has been criticism of Tinto’s insistence that it’s the students who need to take initiative to develop better connections with their professors. This doesn’t hold the institution itself responsible for the student’s success and places all of the weight on the students’ shoulders. Other critics say that this mindset lends credibility to the old adage about ‘pulling yourself up by your bootstraps’ instead of acknowledging the reality of “very real structural barriers” many students face within the college institution (Harrison & Mathuews, 2022, p. 410).

So what does it look like to have faculty lead the way in developing relationships that motivate their students? The authors give the examples of “taking the time to learn and refer to students by their names; giving opportunities for students to witness themselves as successful learners; ensuring the curriculum reflects student backgrounds; sharing knowledge and becoming partners in learning…” (Harrison & Mathuews, 2022, p. 401).

No kidding. Treating students like human beings will motivate them to overcome their struggles and succeed in the class?? Who knew??

Still the authors acknowledge that this is time consuming and labor intensive (Harrison & Mathuews, 2022). They’re not wrong. I spend a great deal of time each semester investing in getting to know my students by name and making a point to ask about things going on in their lives…but during this, by far the most stressful semester of my career as a student, I admittedly dropped the ball on this a bit with my online students. There were simply not enough hours in the day. And I don’t like that fact one bit.

Additionally, the authors explain that administrative “bloat” and the overall state of bureaucracy certainly do not help matters (Harrison & Mathuews, 2022). In fact, part of the problem, according to the authors, appears to lie with administrators attempting to save money by replacing tenured faculty with adjunct instructors for little pay and even less job security. Not that I’m complaining…Sigh…

Other noteworthy takeaways from this article include the acknowledged limitations of the authors’ study as they mention the study was conducted in Feb 2020 “just before COVID-10 immediately affected higher education” (Harrison & Mathuews, 2022, p. 404). I chuckled a bit at that statement. Understatement of the century.

“The shift to remote learning and the emotional toll of navigating college during a global pandemic may add nuances to academic struggle and student-faculty interaction not captured in this study” (Harrison & Mathuews, 2022, pp. 404-405).

Indeed.

And so, it would seem we’ve been struggling to motivate students and instructors ever since then. Incidentally, I’m sure by now there are hundreds of studies on global trauma and motivation, but I find myself wanting to veer back to happier topics than massive PTSD and depression.

This blog and this very long semester are wrapping up on a happy note. The authors found a variety of themes of what behaviors struggling students found helpful from their professors (Harrison & Mathuews, 2022).

Additionally, the article itself led me to begin thinking about motivation and students at the community college level as a focal point for my EDU 800 elevator pitch research questions. And while I do appreciate being motivated to sit down a write a missive to an invisible audience once a week, I am very much looking forward to giving my brain a much-needed “writing rest” until January.

So thank you for joining me on this learning journey this Fall. It’s been real. It’s been relevant. It’s been fun!

‘Til next time…

Harrison, & Mathuews, K. B. (2022). How Students Experience Faculty Responses to Academic Struggle. Journal of College Student Development, 63(4), 399–413.

Additional Resources

Bassett. (2021). Big Enough to Bother Them? When Low-Income, First-Generation Students Seek Help From Support Programs. Journal of College Student Development, 62(1), 19–36. https://doi.org/10.1353/csd.2021.0002

Doran, & Lucht, K. (2021). Creating Meaningful Spaces for Community College Scholarship. Journal of College Student Development, 62(4), 505–507. https://doi.org/10.1353/csd.2021.0052

Jackson, Smith, S. A., & Hill, C. L. (2003). Academic Persistence Among Native American College Students. Journal of College Student Development, 44(4), 548–565. https://doi.org/10.1353/csd.2003.0039

Kim, & Doo, M. Y. (2022). The Effects of Motivation, Career Decision-Making Self-Efficacy, and Self-Regulation on Learning Engagement of Junior College Students. Journal of College Student Development, 63(4), 432–448.

Nelson, Berg, E. A., Wood, N., & Hill, B. (2022). Student Engagement in HyFlex Courses during the COVID-19 Pandemic. Journal of College Student Development, 63(1), 101–105. https://doi.org/10.1353/csd.2022.0001

Shin, & Steger, M. F. (2016). Supportive College Environment for Meaning Searching and Meaning in Life Among American College Students. Journal of College Student Development, 57(1), 18–31. https://doi.org/10.1353/csd.2016.0005

Xiong. (2022). The Role of Faculty In Faculty–Student Engagement: Disaggregated Analyses by Ethnicity for Southeast Asian American College Students. Journal of College Student Development, 63(4), 461–466.