Reinvigorating the Post-COVID Gen Z English Major
Gaby Bedetti, Ph.D.
Abstract
The decline in English majors has energized instructors to upskill for the post-COVID Gen Z student. Toward that end, this small-scale (n=20), one-semester study of an upper-division literature class identifies the preferred learning styles of English majors at a public comprehensive regional university in Kentucky. The participants represent national English major demographics. The research methods are quantitative and qualitative. Eight figures and an appendix are included. Three guidelines emerge for responding to the needs of Gen Z students: 1) keep communication brief, 2) co-create, and 3) interact in-person. The findings about English major learning preferences uphold cross-disciplinary research on active learning in the post-COVID era by indicating ways our teaching styles can keep pace with the needs of our changing majors. In addition to the participants’ experience in the investigator’s course, the survey collects their experience of teaching styles in six core courses in the English major. One drawback of the study is the small participant sampling. Future studies might investigate the difference between students’ preferred learning styles and instructors’ actual teaching styles. Building the English major back better calls for putting accepted theory into reskilled practices.
Keywords: students, English major, learning styles, course format, Gen Z, post-COVID
Introduction
Anyone teaching in a college English Department is keenly aware of “the dwindling number of English majors” (Parry, 2016, para. 26). From 2012 to May 2017, English degrees fell 17 percent, though communication degrees increased 8 percent (American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2021). Although English departments may survive to support the literacy of students in other majors, the viability of English as a major course of study is precarious (Hiner, 2012; Kalata, 2016, p. 54). According to two professors at University of South Carolina, Beaufort, “The BA in English faces significant challenges—most notably, since 2012, the developing risk of extinction” (Swofford & Kilgore, 2020, p. 45). Heller’s claim in The New Yorker on the death of the English major (2023), Walther’s probe in The New York Times on the death of poetry (2022), followed by his “second inquest” (2023), and Scott’s essay on the reading crisis (2023) give voice to an anxiety shared among academics in the humanities across the country (Letters, 2023; The Mail, 2023). The expanding conversation is leading academics to retool their instruction for the new generation. Nationwide English faculties at regional comprehensive universities like mine are rallying. The declining enrollment, with its significant impact on education, creates an opportunity for English departments to rebuild the major for a post-COVID society (Zhao, 2022). A quantitative and qualitative research project, the current study seeks to learn what classroom adju