Teaching university students is becoming increasingly challenging. Help!
I’ve been teaching for about 15 years, across different roles and different universities. Students change over time, that’s normal. I don’t think students are becoming less intelligent as many colleagues say. That’s not really what I’m seeing. What I am seeing is constant indifference. Everything is too hard. Everything needs to be simplified. Then simplified yet more, then explained in a different format, then reduced again because someone is overwhelmed. But then if I reduce the effort too much, they get bored and disengage anyway.
They also have alarmingly increasing "special" needs. I’m not against helping and supporting students with difficulties, they should all feel welcome and supported, that's what uni should be about. At the same time I feel that the number of needs that I need to cater to has become impossible to manage. An alarming percentage of students has some kind of learning-related difficulty, attention issue, anxiety concern, or other need that requires special handling. They can’t sit for too long, can’t stand for too long, get overloaded if they have to study a bit too much. Concentrating is becoming harder and harder. Don't take a break after 40 minutes (which if I recall 45 is the official max for a teaching "hour"), and they immediately zone out, many times flipping out their phones, even during practicals. They are becoming increasingly spoiled, sensitive and fragile but then also complain if they don't get max grades, even though they don't put in the required effort.
I honestly don’t know how to approach this anymore. There are only so many needs I can take into account. There is only so much I can simplify before a course stops being a course and turns into a kindergarten playtime. At this point we are basically handing out free ECTS and pretending learning happened. This is where I would normally insert my "back in my day" statement, but I don't want my students to suffer what I went through. I still need some guidance though, because I'm really frustrated.