Conversations surrounding student norms and expectations are always fascinating. They always start with someone who is very passionate and disgruntled about a situation that has occurred, and the speaker is often dumbfounded by how the person they are talking about hasn’t conformed to the expected norm. Communication is a perfect example that highlights this.
What are student norms and expectations?
- Person 1: Why are they sending me all these text messages, I’m not responding to all that. I’ll just give them a call because it’s quicker.
- Person 2: I’ll organise a meeting with them, that way I can talk with them face-to-face about the issue. Email doesn’t convey the tone I want to express.
- Person 3: Why are they calling me? I’m in the middle of something and I don’t want to be disturbed. Why can’t they just schedule a quick meeting later on?
- Person 4: If they just email me about it, I have all the information to refer back to and I don’t have to try to remember things.
- Person 5: Their email says they’re expecting me to do this today but I’m engrossed in this task, and I can’t just switch between tasks like other people can. I’ll just ignore the email until I am ready to deal with it in my own way.
None of these people are more ‘correct’ than the other. They all have different needs, they all have different norms. These norms are defined by so many aspects: our culture, our age, or gender, our ethnicity, our use of technology, and our abilities. Basically every element that makes us human has an impact on what we consider a ‘norm’ or not.
How do student norms and educator norms differ?
Student norm: If I don’t know the answer to something, I should ask.
Educator norm: Students should read the course guide/syllabus to find the information.
In this scenario, the student emails the educator. The educator gets frustrated because the answer is in the course information. Because of the student norm, the educator now has to respond to the email reminding the student that the information is in the syllabus and they are required to read it. This is a frustration I often hear from educators. I came across this quote recently that really fits the idea of norms and expectations:
“To complain is always nonacceptance of what is.” – Eckhart Tolle
Understanding student norms
Students enter our courses with their own norms, which are difficult to change, and each generation comes with its own unique set of norms that we may need to challenge. Sometimes we don’t challenge these norms, sometimes we conform to them. So, should we accept the student norms, or should we challenge them? If we look at the example above, we can find several reasons why the student emails questions rather than looking at the syllabus.
- Students are ‘too lazy’ to read the course information, and wish to be spoon-fed.
- Students are overwhelmed with information, anxiety panics them, and they ask you because they trust that you have the information.
- None of the courses are designed in the same way, so they previously knew where to find the information but in this course, it’s not in the same place. So, they ask.
- Students find that it is more efficient for them to ask questions because, in other spaces, they often get immediate and informative replies
Looking at the example above, some of these can give us a better understanding of why our students may have established these norms.
- Are our courses all clear and organised in the same way?
- Do all our educators communicate with the students in the same way?
- Do our students have reasons that may impact their ability to conform to our expectations?
- Do they have different cultural norms that we need to consider?
- Do they have a mental health issue that could impact their ability to conform to our norms?
- Are they neurodivergent and could we be hindering their progress by forcing them to conform to our norms?
Changing education to cater to the new student norm
Sometimes, we accept these norms and, in fact, conform to them. The days of the several-hour-long live lecture are largely behind us, and the industry has largely moved towards recorded lectures that are chunked into shorter, more meaningful videos that are hopefully scaffolded with a variety of activities. The industry will tell you that YouTube has made attention spans shorter, and this is how education has responded. More realistically, the lecture originated as a way of conveying information to a large audience when the technology we have now didn’t exist. Given that we have appropriate technologies that allow students to review this information in their own time, it’s quite a dated concept to trap students in a room and speak at them for hours.
Sometimes we need to conform to norms for inclusion, like integrating closed captioning in all our videos. With the right technologies, this is incredibly easy to do and in fact, many students who don’t require closed captioning begin using it because it’s a valuable practice for everyone. This creates a new norm… all students can increase their comprehension because they have the audio and written information in the moment, and also as reference information later on.
In research by Naylor et al. (2021), the authors contend that students should not be the only ones to change their norms: “Where differences in expectations arise and those expectations are reasonable and central to the learning/teaching relationship, we do not believe that students should be the only group to change their expectations to acculturate to the university environment. Instead, academics and students should meet halfway where possible.” (Naylor et al., 2021).
Challenging the student norm by setting expectations
Consider what you expect from your students that perhaps hasn’t been communicated explicitly. The example above could be avoided by setting clearer expectations at the start of the semester. If the course information is clear and has the information the student is requesting, inform the students that you will not be responding to emails if the information has been provided in the course information (and ensure it’s in the same place for each course). If students email you general questions that are not covered in the course information, de-identify the email and post the question and answer to a forum so that all students have access to the information. This idea is also raised in the blog post: Working efficiently, effectively and maintaining boundaries, which may help you manage workload in relation to student expectations.
Consider each student’s needs
Some students will disclose personal information to you that you may want to consider when applying expectations to all students. Students with a disability, those who are neurodivergent, and students with a mental health issue may not be able to meet those expectations, so in the interest of inclusion, you may need to be flexible for individual student needs.
References
Naylor, R., Bird, F. L., & Butler, N. E. (2021). Academic expectations among university students and staff: Addressing the role of psychological contracts and social norms. Higher Education, 82(5), 847–863. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-020-00668-2