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Eugene Frier

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How can we best engage college students in the idea of learning instead of just getting a degree?

I work at a 4 year, public university and I see a great deal of students who come to school to get their degree (which they equate to money/success) and do not care about learning. What are your thoughts on the best way to engage them in the actual process of learning. I have my thoughts, but would love to hear my fellow TEDsters thoughts.

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  • Sahil Dadia

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    Apr 10 2013: The easiest and the most efficient solutions to this problem is:-

    1.Change the mindset of the young students.Avoid drilling into their minds the idea that good education leads to better life.

    2.From primary education encourage only practical knowledge avoid mugging and all such inefficient studying.

    3.Let students harness the aid of 3d modeling softwares for better understanding.

    4.Let students play with 3-D models of everything they learn,let them manipulate the world around them by this they will absorb concepts much better and leads to greater retention.

    5.Last but not the least give least importance to exams in a students life bcoz only then he/she will focus on learning and absorbing a concept and applying it in real life rather than studying for exams and forget it after that.

  • Harro Penk

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    Apr 10 2013: One of the biggest problems I see with university studies in particular is that they are dissociated from what the job market values in terms of skills. Most jobs require a fairly high level of technical skills, and yet most High School graduates lack even the most basic skills to be considered for an entry level job. Universities have traditionally managed to bridge that gap, but as technological changes have accelerated, even Universities are finding that they are ill prepared to deal with the rapid developments and changes.

    I live and breathe IT across a pretty broad spectrum - everything from servers and networks to low level users and even disabled people. The one common thing I see, time and time again, is how - even 20 years into the "information age", workers are still unable to deal with even the most basic technology issues. The really scary thing is that it includes relatively young users as well - often recent college graduates.

    In my narrow world view, we shouldn't allow a single college degree unless they could demonstrate some competence in basic computing skills and typing. At this point every person should have some training in being able to tell what spam and malware looks like. Instead, we (taxpayers) spend inordinate amounts of our dollars and teacher's time in classes on art, photography (anyone still developing film? LOL!), cooking, and sports. We truly have a nation of amateur athletes that don't know how to turn on an All-In-One computer or know NOT to click on every single link in their emails.

    Get a curriculum that is based on industry needs, and which directly leads to competitive jobs and internships with leaders in our various industries. Hold a carrot up in front of our freshmen: "Learn this and earn a real career with unlimited potential", instead of "show up and get a certificate for your wall". Instead of mandatory intro courses on how to find food on campus, perhaps a job-fair or two?

  • Mark Lehman

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    Apr 10 2013: We must first alter our typical education program in the grade levels. Curiosity is squandered by today's formal education, all schools look for are results, so who cares about the arts and broadening ideas in science or research, if the standardized test scores aren't up to par the school isn't successful. How can we hope for us college students to have a drive for curiosity and research when we're being taught that all we need to focus on is getting the grade and that we need to learn how to crunch numbers and fill in bubbles. We're being brought up to live a corporate lifestyle in which everything is standard. you answer phones fill out paper work, and go home. Colleges offer so much for us students but we follow such a common path of schooling that we take whats required we don't expand our horizons because we're taught not too. I'm in college now, I'm in my third year at a community college, now many people will tell me that i must be doing poorly because i should have transferred out by now and that i'm behind, but I'm one of the few who got through the sieve, I look through the courses offered and take just about anything that interests me on top of what is required for my degree. Yes it will take me a bit longer to get my degree, and yes some say its a waste of money, but to me its the ability to become more well rounded and to actually learn new things that are out there. I'm pursuing a degree to be a Elementary and Special Education teacher, but in the mean time I'm taking other things that interest me and as working with kids already i feel like learning and being curious with my own studies will only help me become a better teacher, and hopefully when it comes my time to guide a class of young curious minds, I will be able to help them pursue and strengthen their own curiosity. to encourage today's college students to learn rather than just rush for a degree we need to change their early education and stop ruining our drive and love of pursuing knowledge
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    joy faber 10+

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    Apr 10 2013: Another thing students must understand is that teachers are doing a job. They are trying to build up their credentials so they can get the next big promotion. How students "feel" about the teacher is not high on the list of criteria for promotion. The teacher has to write and get published, has to show initiative, leadership, personal excellence. Teachers are not there to pander to the needs of every slow or lazy student. Kids have to be self motivated and self directed to learn.
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    joy faber 10+

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    Apr 10 2013: When I started back to college @ 38 yo, I was interested in metallurgy and welding, after completing a one year program I moved on to an associate of applied science. Along the way I picked up an associate of liberal arts. When I moved to a four year university I designed my own program through University studies. I took writing classes, communication and journalism, fine art, and English. What surprised me was what I didn't know but needed to before I started into any new course of study.

    I think all schools need to take student feedback more seriously. Students need to be prepared for the rigors of college from K-12. I read a lot of student papers which demonstrated very poor grammar and poor organization skills. Colleges have to provide more of an educational "experience" if they want students to have a zest for learning. It's also a good idea to point out that knowing a little about a lot of fields helps you navigate in society. Where learning everything you can about one field will help you earn a living. Both are necessary.

  • Natasha Martin

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    Apr 10 2013: Curiosity is the difference between actively learning and passively acquiring knowledge. We need teachers that arouse the students interest in specific fields; teachers that engage students to be curious and self-motivated to seek out their own information. A teacher who inspires a student to search and explore for information on their own, in my opinion, is of greater value than the many teachers of today who simply deliver knowledge and information.

  • Erik Smith

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    Apr 10 2013: I certainly agree with Matt. In the past, college was just a place for me to go get a degree. Now that I've served in the Marine Corps and had those years to become more mature, I definitely see college as a place to go learn and become more educated about everything. Instead of just oh yeah I need to go to college for a degree or else I wont go anywhere in life.
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    Matt Tyrrell

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    Apr 9 2013: As a recent college graduate, I can attest that I have been more motivated to learn after graduation. I think that if college were delayed, and students were given a few years to mature after high school, and to enter the workforce, college would be seen as a better opportunity to learn rather than a place to get away from home.
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    Nthabiseng Masodisa

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    Apr 9 2013: We learn from the best teachers. They need to make things interesting and guide students. If you tell me that I must learn these 5 chapters for a test on Friday then I will cram them in order to pass. But if every day you show students the relevance and importance of what it is that they are being taught, in everyday life then they are most likely to learn and remember it for a long time, and from that they can create with the knowledge they have.

    ps. this is a good topic; I remember very little from my degree that I acquired 7yrs ago...

  • Alyssa Mallette

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    Apr 9 2013: Have interesting teachers who can engage the students. I am in school right now and I have changed my major several times because I did not like how I was feeling about school. I found myself in an anatomy class and it was there that I found my desire to learn. My professor was engaging, modern, smart, funny, and he didn't read from powerpoints. He was passionate about what he taught and it showed. If we had more professors like that then students may begin to care about learning again. However, college is a means to an end, and most students are not going to school to learn about something that they care about..they are going to school for something that is relatively uninteresting to them in order to get a job. A lot of the interesting degree choices yield very few prospects for jobs though.

    • Simion Belea

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      Apr 9 2013: I also am a college student and I'm in love with learning. As far as my colleagues are concerned I see they miss the big picture of learning. Parents and culture are also stressing financial security over following passion and learning as far as I see it. But above all these I find Galileo's quote absolutely relevant to this subject: "We cannot teach people anything; we can only help them discover it within themselves." Once a student discovers the joy of learning in himself no matter how old-school the teacher is, he will learn from him whatever he has to share in terms of passion and knowledge. It will have a healthy disregard for the formal education system in order to make learning a particular subject worthwhile. Of all the teachers I had, the only ones I clearly remember are the ones that made me discover something within myself, that I continued following to this day.

  • Jeff Dean

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    Apr 9 2013: Today's talk by Dr. Hrabowski really pointed out a lot of these issues. The main problem is something that he discussed at the end of his talk. College/university courses aren't very well designed and structured. They're presented by tenured professors who are out of touch with the current generation or the industries that their students want to get into. Many of them are not good presenters or teachers, and see the classes they teach as a distraction from research. A lot of the coursework is busy work. Tests really aren't very effective. Many of the course I took in university didn't stimulate learning and academics and didn't prepare me for a career. Which makes them useless in very real sense. People spend money on a college education so that they can get a job afterwards, they don't do it to learn because its not a great place to learn. When I really want to know something I go to the internet. You can't just trust everything on the internet, then again, your professors opinion isn't always right.
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    Chaitanya Ramisetty

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    Apr 8 2013: Teachers today primarily do the following mistakes.

    Mistake #1:
    “Their goal is to increase knowledge.”

    Mistake #2:
    “They Assume that Knowledge = information.”

    Mistake #3:
    “Conduct a quiz, and we’re done!”


    Every Teachers Goals should be:

    1. Change performance, not just knowledge
    2. “Teach” through realistic experience, not just information presentation
    3. Win learners’ attention and respect with challenging activities, not just bling
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    Yusuf Khan

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    Apr 8 2013: Education in our day and time has a distorted meaning to what it actually is. People who study and research things that they are passionate about do it out of curiosity and are driven by finding the answers, while degrees and careers are driven by working and earning a living. To be able to get a job, we require a skill, and thats where what why we choose to study further most of the time, thought we also find when we are studying that there are people who continue studying most of their lives where money plays less of a role than the satisfaction they get from finding answers to their questions!

    I feel that it is some kind of a culture, since companies mostly use degrees as a yardstick for hiring a person so that they certainly have the skills to do the job, yet during interviews, we find that outstanding companies tend to find people with the skills as well as the passion that they require for future development and long term goals!

    I write a blog about many things, and if you see the following link you may see my views on what i feel about the learning process: http://thinkrandomness.blogspot.com/2012/04/everyone-is-scholar-and-teacher.html

    Thanks
    Yusuf

  • Sharan Soumitry

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    Apr 8 2013: I have been working with this firm and giving lot of my ideas and working on project simultaneously while studying is what gives responsibilities and which gives a better purpose for life than to just study and pass out which merely wastes time in finding a direction to life.
    i am thank full that i could work on this project which aims to get the sports equipment reach houses where shooters can train. http://www.elitescorer.com/Home.aspx this the firm..
    also i got a chance to learn people skill with interacting with lot of customers in this http://www.ifuturecapital.com/intradaytradingtips.aspx
    here i got to learn lot of techniques in marketing and people skill..
    one of the main reason why ppl invest is because they are usually successful in their field and hence its important to deal sharply with the successful sharp people..

  • Uri Kanter

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    Apr 8 2013: Well for that I think you would need to convince them that the knowledge they get will actually help them become better at what they do.

    If you look at industry where students want to learn more and the discipline itself is more important than the grades, such as Visual arts and Design, you realize that the passion students must develop for these things stems from the facts that they are doing something creative and in the industry they will have to keep creating things and coming up with new stuff...

    So to achieve the same results in sciences you have to adapt the same approach, instead of having students recite formulas for no apparent reason, they will be introduced to the complex problems of our world, to the applications of sciences and how the students can help influence developments and make patents they can sell for money. (Disgustingly sad but in our current society that is the carrot at the end of that stick)

    Also means that instead of relaying on grades and scores to get a job and secure income there will be actual encouragement of independent study and research and teachers will want to wad through a slushpile of ill composed essays about how this or that can work using what they learned. .

    Presenting students with examples of how the knowledge they gain can be applied or is important is crucial at every step of the way so they can be inspired to learn more and come up with their own stuff.
    Showing them TED lectures might help.

    The problem with this approach is that usually there are Students who are not interested in some schools of knowledge so they tend to disrupt studies for everyone by acting difficult..

  • E p

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    Apr 7 2013: I believe we should look back to the greeks. they had the word "skole", meaning leisure, which later would become "school" in english. leisure meant not simply relaxing recreation, but kind of making search of knowledge and wisdom your lifestyle. finding joy and feeling like you belong just as any other activity we do, but by learning through discussion, practical experimenting and drawing experience from others.

    for this to happen money wod have to seize being boss. seeing as few of the sciences and researches that are important and urgent are not profitable..

  • catherine stubbins

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    Apr 3 2013: Since I am a student and have found flaws in the way I have been learning I have found their is an absence of accountability. On students and professors parts, I want and need to be challenged so I know I can do these things at a job and professors must want to teach and have a passion for the subject. The use of the internet has even though added a great addition to learning it has made finding information easier therefore s student doesnt have to rely on themself to know or understand something.

  • Joseph Middaugh

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    Apr 2 2013: www.coursera.org The world thought Facebook was useful. Third world countries will re engineer the planet with TED and coursera.
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    Manyika Sakambuki

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    Apr 2 2013: The Curricular in these colleges also needs adjustments. You will agree that they are very bulky, centered only on those students who can quickly 'gun' material, rather than learn it. I think the problem starts from childhood. The whole learning environment has to be centered on learning, shaping our minds to question stuff. Then we may be ready to do it with the mental attitude required.

  • Kapalli Srirama

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    TED Translator
    Apr 1 2013: It is the way our society works. We are supposed to get a good university degree which would open doors for jobs in good companies and resulting in a life-long job (and secured life).

    Companies / Govts are offering jobs to people who have degrees from reputed colleges. They do not want people who are lifelong learners. How can we expect students to be lifelong learners in such conditions.

    Funny fact is - Companies say they do not get skilled people (ready to delivery value - for salary paid - from day one).

  • Robert Galway 20+

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    Mar 31 2013: Get them to contribute to the body of knowledge rather than just regurgitate it. Every class should have soem means of enabling students studying the subject to make a contribution. The contribution does not have to be much, like a perspective, and example problem, and application, a concept or thought, but there should be some way to collect and archive some of the thoughts of the thinkers in your classroom.

    This might be the difference between and means to an end and a personal association with the subject material. Often, once you make a contribution, it is infectious, and you want to continue. That is the desire and passion you need to capture.

  • Simone Mata

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    Mar 31 2013: I think it's more of a cultural thing... I'm a first generation student and my initial reasoning for getting into college was based on bettering my life (money/success). That's just what you did to have a better life...

    As for how to engage the process of learning, I'd have to agree with Mark on this. Some of the classes I learned the most in were taught by professors with the highest expectations. Each professor tailored their class to test for understanding, not memorization and regurgitation.
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    Danger Lampost 10+

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    Mar 30 2013: I suspect few share my view. University and college is not about learning. It is a way station between childhood and adulthood, or a substitute for a right of passage, and is primarily viewed as a way to a better job and life. If you have a passion for learning, it matters little where or even if you go to University, as you will learn what you need to learn.

    So, I would suggest the only way of engaging college students in learning is by exposure to others with that same spark.

  • Mark Pompian

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    Mar 30 2013: I find it interesting how many answers interpret the word "learning" in a very specific way, as method and not as objective. Your cue, which opposes learning to "getting a degree" leaves me with the interpretation of learning as "knowledge for its own sake", or more to the point; "knowledge which enhances ones quality of life in ways that are not directly marketable."

    I see the essence of your question as: "how do we convince students that 'non-directly-marketable knowledge' has its own self-defining value?" .

    I think our culture is so currently so wrapped up in "education as survival skill," that the idea of paying money to gain knowledge which is not immediately weighted by its ability to return a visible, quantifiable profit (by your implied definition) lies, essentially, outside of the awareness of most current academic settings, public forums, political agendas, and, finally, and most telling for our collective future; candidates for, and graduates of, higher education. May you find success in your efforts.
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    Mark O'Neil

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    Mar 29 2013: Make it hard to succeed. Really hard. Design your course so that students are pushed to the very limit of what they're capable of. When I know I'm only going to have 3 hours to write a 4 hour exam I'm forced to go beyond simple memorization and regurgitation; I need to know the material inside and out. When I walk out of that final I couldn't care less about the grade; all I feel is a profound sense of accomplishment. I have a few professors who challenge me this way. I have no idea what they get paid but I can say with confidence that whatever it is it isn't enough.

    My university is a cash cow for the government. It markets heavily to international students (who pay 3x tuition) and pumps out degrees. Academic misconduct is widely tolerated and many students are handed credentials they do not earn. By raising the bar you help people like me by preventing my degree from being watered down. When an employer sees Bachelor of Business Administration on my resume I want him to think of 'Rocky Balboa' and not 'Bill and Ted'.

    I can't help but wonder how many of my resumes will be cast aside because the person I'm hoping to replace came from my school.
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    Lee-Anna Johnston

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    Mar 29 2013: Ditch the lecture style and incorporate different learning styles into it. For example role plays, field trips, experiments and laboratories for the kinaesthetic learners, handouts, booklets, written material for the reader/writer learners, video clips, visual aids, powerpoints for the visual learners, and audio and video clips, and discussions for the audio learners. Also, adult learners are more engaged in their learning when they feel a part of the learning. Having group discussions, debating different theories, mock trials, and encouraging learners to share their knowledge and experiences in the context of learning. Works wonders. I am a trainer, and I have also lectured at University. I have many people approach me after the trainings where I have incorporated all of the above, to tell me how much fun they had, how passionate they are now about the subject, and how much they are looking forward to using what they have learnt out in the world. It seriously works!
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    angela anima-korang

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    Mar 27 2013: I think the best way to get us students to learn is to be really engaging with students. Most of the lectures are delivered one-way, not encouraging students to share their opinions on topics being discussed. The most chance students have to say anything is during exams, by which time they barely have any in-depth understanding of what they have been taught. Professors should ask questions, get students to make talking-points, encourage group discussions, and the culture that 'no answer is a bad answer'. I think that students are willing to learn, it is only that the style of teaching now does not really emphasize learning, just studying.

  • Richard E Reed

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    Mar 27 2013: I wish this was after my first comment, where it belongs.
    By the way, over the years I have been employed as a teacher in private schools whose students were accredited by the respective states and countries where I taught. I have edited a newspaper and worked as a salaried copy writer for magazines. I functioned as a salaried researcher in applied science, as the data processing manager for an auto parts wholesaler, managed a branch for that wholesale business, and never once was asked about my educational background. I was generally hired away from my current employer by one of his associates or friends who became aware of my job performance.

    Drive, your own thirst for knowledge, and your personal desire to improve yourself and anything you touch will hold you in good stead with whatever endeavor you have decided to pursue. Formal education will open many doors for you, but personal excellence cannot be overestimated.

    I have a young acquaintance without a high school diploma or even a GED who landed a job during the height of unemployment as dishwasher in a newly opened restaurant. After a year he is being groomed as a cook and assistant manager. The owner has even spoken of opening a new branch with him in charge. Hard work, dedication, and loyalty still go a long way toward personal success.

  • Richard E Reed

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    Mar 27 2013: The raison d'etre and modus operandi of colleges mitigate against a desire to learn. These institutions are designed to deliver a series of studies some other person has decided should be of interest to a student and the mastery of these subjects is but a step toward a goal of employment that a student needs.

    Furthermore, these studies proceed at a pace that may not even closely approximate the learning abilities of the student. Today that student has far more efficient, specialized, and relevant means to acquire whatever knowledge that captures his interests or needs.

    We must differentiate between "formal" learning and practical individualized education. Everyone is learning in every moment of their waking, and sometimes even their sleeping, hours. Much of that learning is incidental to their everyday environment, but they are also acquiring knowledge that satisfies their curiosity and the incidental encounters that spark their interest. Look at how rapidly students learn the skills, niceties, and accepted language distortions of texting and tweeting, for example.

    Unfortunately, with the explosion of information and the burgeoning of tools that replace once required learned techniques much of formal education has become irrelevant.

    Software can design a building to my liking and guarantee it will meet all physical constraints required as it complies with all codes. Word processors can guarantee correct spelling and acceptable grammar in what I write. Calculators can apply geometric, algebraic, and calculus operations without my needing to know how those things are done. Google can translate articles written in any foreign language. Even my cell phone can translate conversations I may have with others who do not speak my language. Formal education need to be modernized to the world in which it operates. Otherwise it is just a ticket an antiquated system forces one to buy to get many jobs in the work place.
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