Saša Čekrlija
This paper explores the challenges faced by university teaching methodologies in the context of Generation Z, with a particular focus on the People's Republic of China. Generation Z, born between the mid-1990s and early 2010s, has grown up in a digital environment where mobile phones, social media, and constant access to information have become integral parts of everyday life. This generation exhibits significant differences from previous generations in how they process information, learn, and communicate. One of the key challenges in educating Generation Z is their reduced ability to focus and shorter attention spans, which poses a problem for traditional teaching methods that rely on long lectures and static presentations. In an environment where information is available at the click of a button, Generation Z prefers quick, concise, and visually stimulating content. Additionally, this generation has a strong need for interaction, whether through digital platforms or within the classroom, and they tend to be highly pragmatic learners, focusing on acquiring practical skills that can be immediately applied in the real world. These changes necessitate the redefinition of teaching methods at universities. Traditional knowledge transmission methods, which rely on frontal teaching, increasingly fail to meet the needs and expectations of Generation Z students. This raises the question of how to adjust class duration, lecture content, and evaluation methods to better address their specific needs. It is also essential to explore new pedagogical approaches, such as gamification, the use of digital tools, and interactive learning, which may enhance the engagement and success of this generation in the educational process. This paper will analyze existing teaching practices in China, identify their shortcomings in the context of Generation Z, and propose innovative approaches with the potential to improve the learning process at the university level. Through case analysis, the goal is to determine how crucial digitalization and changes in teaching methods are for the successful education of this generation, and how universities can adapt to ensure relevant and effective education for future generations. This research, through empirical testing of the hypothesis on the impact of using mobile applications on the academic success of Generation Z students, demonstrates that Generation Z students achieve better results on the final test when the curriculum includes research that they can conduct on a specific sample using mobile applications for data collection, processing, and graphical presentation of results.
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