This recent change in behavior really has me baffled and I feel compelled to explore it on the blog.

Let me first explain that I do have over 15 years of experience teaching students at the high school and college levels.  I have taught in face-to-face situations at the high school level and on college campuses.  I also have several years of experience in facilitating a variety of professional development activities for adult learners in the education profession.  I am currently teaching college-level courses 100% online — and have been doing so for nearly 2 years.  I can safely say that I have enough experience with a range of students/learners to say that the change in behavior that I am noticing over the past couple of months is definitely not of the norm that I expect.

Additionally, I have discussed this issue with a number of online colleagues — all of whom have also noticed this recent change/increase in inappropriate behavior among the students.  The behavior listed below is compiled from discussions between several online instructors.

So what kind of behavior am I talking about?

• Increase in rudeness and abusive language directed at instructors.
• Increase in student demands for leniency in grading or following policy with regard to late work, plagiarism, etc.
• Extremely poor or non-existent reading/comprehension skills — resulting in students who are completely unaware of the requirements of the course or even unaware or unable to understand the content of the course. (For example, a student taking a design theory course who at the end of the class expressed anger that he did not learn anything about C++, Perl, or PHP in the class.)
• Increase in passive-agressive behavior when given directives by the instructor.
• Increase in blaming instructors for student failure — including, but not limited to, not alerting student to plagiarism violations in time for student to resubmit work for better grade, not teaching student what student thinks they should be learning in the class (when what they think they should be learning is NOT in the syllabus), etc.
• Demanding better grade because student feels work meets their own standards even if it doesn’t meet instructor’s standards (yes, seriously)
• Use of crude language and even threats against instructors when students don’t get their way.

In discussions with other online instructors and colleagues, we have come up with a list of theories on why this behavior seems to be increasing in the student population:

• Entitlement mentality (but not limited to one age-group)
• “Customer” mentality — I am paying for this so I should get what I want, as opposed to “paying for the privilege to learn”
• Economy — general frustration with “the system”, being laid-off from work and returning to school for more training, financial concerns, etc.
• Online allows student some anonymity — they feel confidence to say & do things they wouldn’t say or do in person
• Recent news coverage of the recruiting scandals at some for-profit schools — possibility that students are reacting to this news and including instructional staff (at any school) in their “line of fire” and/or allowing this news to give them permission to show no respect to anyone at the school
• Personality types (and part of the reason why they are non-traditional students to begin with — perhaps why they may have struggled in K-12 and not gone to higher ed right after graduation?)
• The time of year, the weather, alignment of the planets…???

Do we know exactly why this behavior is occurring?  No.  Do we have solutions on how to prevent this?  Not really.  Of course, the students who are exhibiting this behavior might say that it could be prevented if we would just give in to their demands and relax our academic standards so that they could pass the classes with good grades.  Unfortunately for those students, they are dealing with faculty who do have high academic and professional standards and who do not bend or break when faced with such behavior from students.

I should also note that this is occurring with college-level students who are mostly non-traditional.  They are adults and they are of all ages — this behavior is not limited to “Gen Y” and we have noticed it with students who would be considered Gen X and Baby Boomers.  I do not recall ever experiencing this kind of behavior when I taught at the high school level nor when I taught on the ground college-level courses.

I’m curious if anyone else has noticed this type of behavior increasing recently — either online or offline — with your students?

Any other potential theories on this beyond what I’ve listed above?

I find this curious — and disturbing — and while I don’t know that there is any clear-cut solution, I do think this is worthy of discussion.

And in case you are curious, yes, I “stick to my guns” — I do not change grades, allow late submission of work beyond what is allowed in school policy, or give in to any other “demands” from students.  So while the behavior baffles and frustrates me, it does not change my professional behavior in the classroom.   It has however, changed my “openness” to my students… I now only use a Google Voice number and do not openly reveal my geographic location to the students in my classes.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

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