by Dr. Julie Ridgway
Have you noticed your student staff engaged with your curricular approach? Are students attending or utilizing your strategies? Have you thought about if your curricular approach is Gen Z enough?
Generation Z is the current generation of students living in our residence halls. As defined by Pew, Generation Z individuals were born between 1997 and 2012, so we have until about 2034 Generation Z as our traditionally aged college students. An important background to this blog post is that my doctoral dissertation work was on undergraduate Generation Z STEM students’ learning preferences and how they define the purpose of college
This blog post will explore some of the ways that you could make your curricular approach fit with 2026 and Generation Z while discussing how Generation Z has made an impact on how we approach the work of residence life.
This blog series features different writers responding to the prompt, “How is the rising generation of college students changing residence life practice?”
I know I can feel the change in this student population from the students when I first started higher education 10 years ago. Just a few differences I have noticed are:
- Mental health concerns are on the rise
- There are populations of students who do not understand how to have conflict appropriately.
- The engagement levels and participation in student organizations of the 2026 undergraduates feel much higher than students even five years ago.
I know people say that those who work in higher ed have an interesting experience because we always get older, but our students stay 18. I feel I just started to feel that in this post-COVID-19 era.
Let’s explore just two of the traits of Generation Z and how they could be applied to make your curricular approach more “Gen Z”. Adding a caveat to this blog post: not all traits apply to everyone in Generation Z, this is just what the researchers have found as trends for Generation Z.
Desire for Individualized Experiences
Generation Z students are known to want individualized experiences (Ford & Moseley, 2020; Weber & Heim, 2021). With my work interviewing students for my dissertation, students talked about how they preferred instructors who knew who they were, cared about them, and found ways to teach to their learning styles when asked to. This can easily be brought into Residence Life through the curricular approach. Here are some ideas to create an individualized experience in your curricular approach:
- Bring in different formats into strategies. For example, when you have a RA send out a check-in message, they could also host something at the desk that is interactive to ask the same question, they could ride the elevator and ask students check-in questions for a certain amount of time, or RAs could put up sort of visual like a sticky note-board or thermometer to put how students are feeling. Having different formats to meet students where they may best engage creates an individualized experience
- Think about your large-scale programming. What are ways that you can make sure that individuals feel like the event is for them and they are a part of the program? Make sure they have opportunities to engage, interact, build, talk to others, and connect with the presenter, content, and other residents. An individual experience can come out of a large room if we are making efforts to engage, welcome, and include all who attend.
Hands-On Learners
The second trait we will look at about Generation Z is that Generation Z want hands-on learning and experiences (Ford & Moseley, 2020). We are so creative in Residence Life. With each changing generation we continue to grow in our creativity to meet students’ needs. Here are some ideas on how to bring hands-on learning into your curricular approach strategies:
- Application of materials. For example, teaching students how to do laundry can include hands-on demonstrations, guessing how much to fill a washer by putting tape in the machine, or sorting paper clothing with laundry tag symbols for students to learn what the symbols mean. As much as you can, create strategies which include hands-on practice with the content.
- Strategies with application-based learning outcomes. Create learning outcomes where the students apply the concepts. This will help you assess their learning and students are more likely to retain content they participated in.
- Use student staff in the review process of facilitation guides. They will give feedback about how to make strategies engaging to students. They are a strong asset in the curricular approach.
Overall, the curricular approach is easily adapted to become more “Gen Z”. Create individualized experience and hands-on opportunities, and your curricular approach will be well on its way to being Gen Z.
References
Ford, C. R., & Moseley, L. (2020). Challenges to health professions education and strategies for moving forward. New Directions for Teaching and Learning, 162, 199–207.
Weber, K. M., & Keim, H. (2021). Meeting the needs of generation z college students through out of-class interactions. About Campus, 26(2), 10–16.
