cmduke

Digital Natives
Net Generation
Millenials
Generation Y . . .

Most to nearly all of the literature I’ve read and conference sessions I’ve attended address the issue of “teaching millenials” as a matter of adapting to the changing learning styles that the current secondary to early college generation brings to the classroom. Characteristics and descriptors used to describe this generation of learners often include, in no particular order:

• connected
• social
• immediate
• experiential
• social
• teams
• structure
• engagement & experience
• visual & kinesthetic
• digitally literate

Consider these questions before reading any further . . . What are the most salient and enjoyable learning experiences you can recount from your high school, undergraduate or graduate studies? Take some time to describe one or more of those experiences. Also, which teacher(s) made an impression upon you and provided a particularly challenging learning experience?

Seriously. Stop and think for a minute. Describe that environment and what you remember about it. Get a mental picture. Consider and smile while you run through the experience in your head. Or, if someone’s available, share it with them.

Here’s several examples from my own education.

For High School Senior Math, I had Mr. Dean for a pre-Calculus type class. We used graphing calculators that were “way cool” to a math and gadget nerd. That year, he and I engaged in long discussions about different proofs – well beyond the work did in class. We talked about how much he enjoyed math, why he chose to teach it, and why he continued to teach even though he could have retired years earlier. We challenged one another. I continued to question, although naively, why 1/0 couldn’t actually be infinite. Sure, I understood the math, but I had logical reasons. We batted that one around for a long while. When I graduated he gave me a copy of an old calculus book that he personally enjoyed – complete with his autograph.

For a junior level, undergraduate literature class, I had Dr. Tom Hanks (no relation, of course) for “Chaucer.” Each of us in the class had to learn to repeat the Prologue in English as Chaucer wrote it; we listened to audio tapes from others who had recorded their readings of the same material. As I remember it, we were challenged to complete an original research project; we were advised to work and discuss our work with one another. We were introduced to library resources that provided audio recordings of the entire Canterbury Tales and asked to practice reading in middle English. There were extensive class discussions that included more than a few impromptu debates; to that point in my education, I had not worked harder on any research project before that one.

In graduate school, I had Dr. Lauren Cifuentes for an Advanced Instructional Design course and Dr. Jenny Sandlin for Adult Education and Learning Theory. In both instances, I worked with classmates and colleagues on a project or two; we communicated with one another in a variety of ways, email included. I also felt compelled in both instances to negotiate a different individual project than what was originally planned and was afforded the opportunity to pursue my ideas. Those two instances allowed me to truly discover my own unique learning identity – something I now understand I had begun with Dr. Hanks and Mr. Dean but for which I didn’t have many other opportunities earlier in my career.

Each of those experiences were quality learning experiences; I enjoyed them. They all provided something new – new content, new formats, new methods of and approaches to communicating with teachers and classmates. I worked harder than I had worked before; I felt like I was learning in a new and different way, and I firmly believe, without question that each experience pressed me to be:

• connected
• social
• immediate
• experiential
• social
• teams
• structure
• engagement & experience
• visual & kinesthetic
• digitally literate

But wait.. That can’t be. I’m certainly NOT a millenial; the first six years of my teaching career were spent teaching pre-millenials (or prior to 2000, at least). So, how can MY memorable learning experiences have exhibited characteristics of what’s supposed to be unique and new with millenials just now coming to secondary and early college classrooms?

Easy. Millenials are NOT different learners than those of us not-so-millenials trying to teach them. When given the opportunity, I reacted positively to engaging, social, experiential, visual, connected learning experiences, and I’m pretty confident most learners would have if they encountered those unique teachers. And, in each instance, my contemporaries and I were more “technology literate” than those before us – even if that did only mean we had become used to using graphing calculators and seeing them connected to overhead projectors.

Millenials are NOT different learners, but just like us not-so-millenials before them, Millenials have the opportunity to learn with grander and newer technologies than the those available to their teachers when their teachers were in secondary or undergraduate education.

Millenials are NOT different learners. Certainly, we’re witnessing an exponential growth in technologies, but the technology does not mean millenial learning styles are that much more evolved than our own when we were at the same point in our education.

Millenails are NOT different learners. There’s just more communication technologies around us that can be used to help them get the kind of learning experiences I – and likely everyone else – had, even if on a rarer occassion, with the Mr. Dean’s, Dr. Hanks’, Dr. Cifuentes’ and Dr. Sandlin’s of the world. There are additional communication technologies that we should be including in our learning strategies; but that’s a matter of using the tools that are at our disposal rather than adjusting to a new kind of learner.

All the new technology around us means we, as teachers, have more ways to to provide experiential learning activities, to use incredible visualizations, and to offer complex computer-based virtual simulations – all in an effort to communicate with them.

It’s all about the conversation and communication. Millenials are not different learners.

(list of characteristics/descriptors taken from: Educating the Net Generation, Oblinger & Oblinger Eds. http://tinyurl.com/zrawj)