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millennial students

what does student entitlement look like?

How Should We Respond to Student Entitlement?

I discovered some good literature on the student entitlement topic while preparing for the Magna Online Seminar program I’m presenting later today. Among the content areas addressed in the literature are: what entitlement is, what attitudes and beliefs are indicative of it, what’s causing it, whether it’s a recent phenomenon, how it can be measured, and what those measurements reveal. But something crucial is missing: how should faculty respond. Some sources offer hints, but I did not find any good, substantive advice. This post then is an attempt to start the conversation and to invite your insights and suggestions for dealing with these troublesome attitudes and beliefs.

Maryellen Weimer, PhD October 18, 2017

Student Entitlement: Key Questions and Short Answers

What is student entitlement? Ask a group of teachers to define student entitlement and their answers will strike similar themes. A definition often used by researchers categorizes student entitlement as a “tendency to possess an expectation of academic success without taking personal responsibility for achieving that success.”

Maryellen Weimer, PhD October 4, 2017

Examining the Helicopter Professor Label

Here’s a comment that’s got me thinking.

Kristie McAllum writes in Communication Education, “We have created a system that simply replaces helicopter parents with helicopter professors. . . . Through our constant availability to clarify criteria, explain instructions, provide micro-level feedback, and offer words of encouragement, we nourish millennials’ craving for continuous external affirmations of success and reduce their resilience in the face of challenges or failure.”

Maryellen Weimer, PhD September 27, 2017

Millennial Students Aren’t All the Same

“A disservice is done to any student cohort when they are globally defined by a single set of character traits. Within any generation, there is diversity and in the Millennial Generation, there is considerable diversity in background, personality and learning style.” (p. 223) So concludes a lengthy and detailed article that seeks, among other goals, to “demystify” the characteristics commonly attributed to students belonging to this generation. “Analysis of research data suggests that these students may not be as different from other generations in the fundamental process of learning as is regularly proposed.” (p. 215) These authors believe that’s important because “it is crucial to accurately assess which specific ‘stable characteristics’ truly impact the learning process and should be targeted for consideration in instructional design.” (p. 215)

Maryellen Weimer, PhD April 30, 2013

The Five R’s of Engaging Millennial Students

The first indication that the Millennial Generation may be different from previous generations is to consider how many different names we have for the generation and the people who belong to it. They’re referred to as Generation Y, Nexters, Baby Boom Echo Generation, Echo Boomers, Digital Natives, Generation Next, Generation Me and, of course, Millennials.

Mary Bart November 16, 2011