Gen Z learners

When designing curricula, we argue it is important to understand the characteristics of those who are going to consume the content and tailor educational practices accordingly. Gen Z (also known as “zoomers”) learners, who are currently between the ages of 5 and 25, will be the majority university learner population for the next 15 years and are projected to make up over one third of the workforce by 2030 (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2020). We have already witnessed universities and organizations previously adapting to the needs of the preceding Millennial generation (e.g., increasing engagement through relationship management, spotlighting well-being), and it is now time to focus on the next generation of learners and workers by first ensuring that their undergraduate experiences adapt to promote their personal and professional development.

To do so, we must begin by understanding Gen Z students, their backgrounds, and what they want out of an education. These true “digital natives” are unlikely to have any memory of life before the ubiquity of the smartphone (Parker & Igielnik, Reference Parker and Igielnik2020), essentially taking technology and universal data access for granted. In their comprehensive study presented in the book Generation Z Goes to College, Seemiller and Grace (Reference Seemiller and Grace2016) note that members of Gen Z have less experience with sex, drinking, and drugs than do their predecessors, and are more likely to be educated. They further describe that many Gen Z learners have been raised to trust that they will be taken care of in educational contexts (e.g., via “no child left behind”) and believe that hierarchies are passé, instead favoring the development of personal relationships regardless of status (e.g., everyone is connected with a dashed line in an organizational chart). Gen Z students also approach their college searchs with a practical mind-set, attentive to value and relevance, and they are looking for more integration of their academic and practical experiences. Indeed, almost 80% of recently surveyed Gen Z learners noted the critical importance of an undergraduate curriculum that includes real-world activities such as internships and practicum (Seemiller & Grace, Reference Seemiller and Grace2016). This is not surprising given that zoomers are less likely to have early working experiences (e.g., jobs in high school or college) than are previous generations (Parker & Igielnik, Reference Parker and Igielnik2020).

Further diverging from previous generations, Gen Z favors an educational experience that blends online and face-to-face instruction, independent and group work, and the liberal arts with professional skills training—all with immersive elements and an experiential bent. Gen Z learners seek project-based learning and undergraduate research opportunities to hone crucial, marketable skills and are also more data-driven and hungrier for feedback than their predecessors (Schroth, Reference Schroth2019). It is thus clear that Gen Z wants a multimodal, interdisciplinary experience in college that they can immediately apply to the real world once they graduate. Meeting these needs through curricular updates will better prepare these students for their real-world roles and also potentially serve as a catalyst for evolution and growth in ourselves as educators.

A (Second) call to action

We echo Kath etal.’s (Reference Kath, Salter, Bachiochi, Brown and Hebl2021) challenge “to actually change something about the way you teach I-O psychology to undergraduates” and appreciate the notion that “there should be no guilt in starting small.” In that spirit, we posit that the first seemingly small, but actually large, change that we can make as educators is to adjust our own mind-sets to align more closely with those of our Gen Z learners. We should try to see life and learning through their eyes, their experiences, and through their expectations of their education and how these feed into their longer term professional and personal life goals.

Kath etal.  (Reference Kath, Salter, Bachiochi, Brown and Hebl2021) emphasize the critical importance of “getting to know your students” and offer easy suggestions for doing so (e.g., learning names, forming relationships); yet, this can also be accomplished at a higher level to learn more about Gen Z learners as a group. Learning more about these learners as a group can help supplement the knowledge that is gained from interactions with individual students and inform expectations about overarching preferences, learning needs, and areas of growth that should be incorporated into the curriculum one is designing. As our careers as educators progress, it is humbling yet critical to acknowledge that the age gap between ourselves and our students is ever widening. We must not forget that although our students’ ages remain relatively static, their experiences, needs, priorities, and preferences most definitely do not.

Thus, as educators seek to delve into the rich body of literature on best practices for teaching and learning, we propose that they do so in the context of the goals and learning objectives that are most valued by Gen Z learners. That is, we posit that efforts to (re)design curricula must consider the research evidence about educational activities and research evidence about the audience in tandem and that merging both offers a greater opportunity to enhance educational experiences for Gen Z students. Beyond the summary offered above, we encourage readers to dive deeper into any of the popular press titles focused on Gen Z, education, and work (e.g., Seemiller & Grace, Reference Seemiller and Grace2016) to help further introduce a Gen Z learner’s mind-set to the other changes you consider for your classroom.

Although many of the recommendations that are offered in the focal article are suitable for Gen Z learners, they may need to be adapted or clarified to better align with their experiences, needs, priorities, and preferences. For example, does creating a flipped classroom achieve the goals that are most valued by Gen Z students? Replacing time that would traditionally be devoted to lecturing with a series of practical, skill-building projects would likely be very effective, whereas substituting the time with less-structured group discussions and activities with no tangible output or concrete feedback may not. Likewise, is individualized feedback important, or do Gen Z learners desire more (quantity) data-driven feedback, perhaps comparing their performance with others’ or to their own predefined goals? We don’t propose to have all the answers but rather pose these questions to illustrate the type of thinking that educators can engage in to challenge what has worked in the past and ensure that it works for learners now and in the future.

We now conclude with a brief case study to illustrate some of the recommendations from the focal article in action and how Gen Z learners have thrived in a purposefully designed experiential learning scenario.

A Case study: The eco challenge

The Eco Challenge is a semester-long cross-disciplinary applied leadership project, connecting teams of students from across our university to engage in defining and solving issues that are related to environmental sustainability. Although not formally part of an I-O psychology course curriculum, students from Management, Engineering, Communications, Finance, and Psychology majors enroll in discipline-specific courses and are then placed in cross-disciplinary teams for the challenge. Created specifically with Gen Z students in mind, the Eco Challenge exemplifies many of the recommendations that are offered by Kath etal. (Reference Kath, Salter, Bachiochi, Brown and Hebl2021), some of which have been restructured to specifically cater to Gen Z (see Table 1 for examples). Most centrally, although the stated mission of the Eco Challenge is to identify and solve issues that are related to environmental sustainability, its primary pedagogical goals are to teach students about group and team functioning, diversity and inclusion, and leadership—classic and critical I-O psychology topics. Importantly, the focus on sustainability was chosen based on feedback from Gen Z students, who desired an experience that aligned with both their emerging values and the trends and needs they themselves identified in potential future employers.

Table 1.

Gen Z Learner-Focused Examples

Eco Challenge student teams brainstorm sustainability issues that are relevant to the local community, determine which issue to focus on as a team, envision a solution to the problem, engage with external stakeholders to clarify their vision, and present a solution as a proactive proposal to a panel of experts who assess its quality. Early in each semester, interactive workshops on team dynamics and effectiveness, conflict management, internal and external (i.e., stakeholder) communication, and project management help to bridge knowledge and skill gaps between the various student backgrounds while simultaneously motivating them through a common superordinate goal. These components were designed for Gen Z students, a task that is primarily accomplished through iterating based on student ideas and feedback coupled with research evidence on the needs of Gen Z learners.

In addition to designing the tasks of the challenge with Gen Z in mind, we have also cultivated an assessment process to meet Gen Z learners’ needs. We know that our Gen Z students want to see data and feedback regarding their professional development (e.g., Lanier, Reference Lanier2017), so we have ensured that this is part of the process. Most recently, pre- and post-Eco Challenge data show that students self-reported increased leadership skills, including applying leadership to practice, designing leadership roles, and constructing effective arguments; increased ability to define key issues and desired outcomes; and increased ability to effectively communicate with multiple diverse stakeholders. Upon completion of the challenge, we review and discuss these data-driven outcomes and goal progress with students to help them “see” their learning and development, better allowing them to communicate it to potential employers on the job market. Some students can further boast of the real-world results of their work.  The university has chosen to fund and execute some of the teams’ ideas (e.g., replacing a gas-powered utility vehicle fleet with electric models).

We also use the assessment data that we collect each semester to iterate and improve the Eco Challenge. Qualitative data have also reflected high student satisfaction with the Eco Challenge, helping solidify its long-term integration as a unique experiential learning component of our interdisciplinary curricula. Further, data from other stakeholders demonstrate the unique value of the Eco Challenge as both an excellent experience for students and one that benefits the faculty, who gain experience with teaching and leading students from other majors and coteaching and learning from other educators. The design and ultimate success of the Eco Challenge also assists our administrators, recruiters, and development officers to craft compelling narratives about the experience, its influence on the community, and the real-world marketability of the skills that students gain—all helpful in sustaining the program and reaching more students.