Are the courses designed by Canadian professors meeting the needs of the 2.2 million college and university students studying here as well as they could be?
According to results from a first-of-its-kind study at George Brown College - which borrowed from a well-respected marketing practice to listen to and interpret the needs, wants and expectations of students as customers' - there's plenty of room to improve, starting with a better framework for group work and more opportunities for oral exams.
"The underpinning is there's a lot of hypocrisy in post-secondary education; there's talk about equality and balance, but in reality there's this power dynamic between faculty and students that hasn't been addressed," said Blair Smith, a professor in the School of Marketing and project director of the college's Voice of the Student applied research project.
Smith will present key findings and recommendations based on the innovative research project at the upcoming Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences (Congress 2025), Canada's leading academic gathering and one of the most comprehensive in the world, taking place May 30 to June 6 in Toronto.
Billed as a leading conference on the critical conversations of our time, Congress 2025 themed "Reframing togetherness" serves as a platform for the unveiling of thousands of research papers and presentations from social sciences and humanities experts worldwide. With more than 7,000 scholars, graduate students and practitioners expected to participate, the event will challenge attendees to model togetherness by working across differences, questioning hierarchies, and bridging divides in knowledge and experience to tackle the world's most persistent challenges.
In his Congress presentation, Smith will share how the idea for the project was inspired by student comments he'd often hear in his role as professor and program coordinator, things like We can't say anything about it' or I didn't watch the lesson video' or There's too much group work'. To better evaluate student learning needs, preferences and motivators, he designed a research project around a common marketing practice called Voice of the Customer, substituting Student' for Customer,' with the goal of listening to students on their terms.
"The more faculty adopt a learning mind, and act with empathy by listening to and learning from our students, the more it will help us to create better learning experiences for them," he said.
"I want to make the students' voice louder and more heard, and to try to empathize with them," added Smith. "Right now, if there's an issue in the classroom, students feel they can't speak up because there's this inherent power dynamic in the professor-student relationship and the feeling is the professor controls the ultimate currency, which is the grade."
The project involved a series of focus groups conducted with post-graduate marketing students, followed by an in-depth online survey. Questions were designed to explore three main themes: student lifestyle, general learning needs and wants, and overall learning experience. In the survey, students were flashed prompt words related to teaching methods, such as case study, simulation, lecture, verbal test, written test and group project, and their responses were evaluated as positive or negative using sentiment analysis.
What the researchers discovered is that students prefer simulations, case studies and client projects because they provide opportunities for real-life practice and hands-on learning. They also uncovered a lot of negative feelings related to group work, particularly when groups are larger than four people, and a slight preference for verbal tests over written tests.
The number one factor influencing curriculum, according to the students, is the individual attitude, mindset, effective use of resources and class facilitation skills of each faculty member.
"The underlying thread is that it's the mindset of the teacher, their approach and their ability to read the room that's going to make or break the learning experience," said Smith. "It's kind of like Duh!' but really the skills of bringing learning to life influences all of this. It will create stress or destress, it will make a group project better or worse, and it will motivate or demotivate students."
Based on their findings, the researchers are sharing key curriculum recommendations with administration and faculty to enable more student-centric curriculum design. For example, some of curriculum recommendations coming from students include: the creation of a group project guide for faculty that will outline parameters for successful group work, capping groups at four members and using a fairer evaluation criteria; switching some tests from written to verbal; and, creating more activities that encourage verbal communication.
The researchers are also recommending ongoing professional development for teaching identity and specific facilitation skills. The goal is to start changing the mindset of the professor from sage on the stage' to guide on the side.'
Organized by the Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences in partnership with George Brown College, Congress 2025 is sponsored by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, Universities Canada, Colleges and Institutes Canada, University Affairs, the Canada Foundation for Innovation, Sage, and The Conversation Canada.
Registration - which includes 100+ keynote and open Congress sessions, with a virtual attendance option for many presentations - is $30. Visit https://www.federationhss.ca/en/congress2025 to register for a community pass and access the program of events open to the public.
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