How to engage busy students? Make school cool

saull and ahmad

MSU president Teddy Saull, left, Mount Royal University student Tristan Smyth and Arshad Ahmad, McMaster’s associate vice-president, teaching and learning. The trio were in Stockholm, Sweden in June to talk to educators about reaching increasingly overwhelmed students.


Teddy Saull’s favourite course showed him that learning should be fun and effective at the same time – and it didn’t even take place in a classroom.

The psychology, neuroscience and behviour alumnus, now president of the McMaster Students Union, says the course he most enjoyed as a student saw him work in McMaster’s Anxiety Research Centre.

“I worked with a faculty member to come up with a question, figure out how to answer it, and then do the research. It was totally self-directed.”

Offering more self-directed learning opportunities is one way of making education more appealing to students, many of whom juggle their studies with part-time jobs, athletics and other extra-curricular activities and life commitments.

That was one of the ideas Saull took to the International Consortium for Educational Development in Stockholm, Sweden June 16-18.

Saull and Arshad Ahmad, McMaster’s associate vice-president, teaching and learning, and Mount Royal University student Tristan Smyth were in Sweden to facilitate the first-ever student-led workshop at the conference.

The session, called “Diminishing the Cult of Busy in Teaching and Learning,” was aimed at faculty and others who struggle to reach students who are often overwhelmed by competing priorities.

“What happens in the classroom has to compete with all that students are doing outside of it,” says Saull. “Teachers have to reinvent ways to make school feel cool, and I think it’s definitely doable. In our workshop we brainstormed curriculum design tools that empower students to become true partners in their own learning.”

He cautions, however, that taking on the “cult of busy” doesn’t mean making academic work easier.

“We’re training world-class thinkers here. It’s not about assigning less work so they have time to do other things,” says Saull. “It’s about assigning work with the knowledge that students are busy people, with lots of important commitments.”

The session builds on a project developed by last year’s 3M National Student Fellows, including McMaster’s Brianna Smrke. They launched an online support network for students who want to lead active lives, but not feel overwhelmed.

“Students today are asked to balance a number of different commitments in a short amount of time,” Smrke told the Daily News in February. “We’re sometimes referred to as the ‘squeeze generation,’ and it can have a big impact on stress levels if managed incorrectly.”

“One of the key questions around being busy is whether students and faculty members are engaged in meaningful, productive and fulfilling activities, or whether they’re just caught up in busy work,” says Ahmad. “It’s becoming clear that the reasons we’re busy are universal, and for better or worse, they have become a badge many of us wish to wear.”

Saull says he got valuable feedback from educators in the Stockholm audience, many of whom noted the increasing importance of asking how meaningful each activity in a course is to students’ learning.

“It’s really a simple question of understanding how being busy impacts teaching and learning,” he says. “What do we need to do to push teaching forward?”