There certainly is a lot of buzz and panic rippling throughout the Higher Ed community about how institutions can best prepare for this “new breed” of learner poised to enter the upper echelons of education in the next few years. This new style of student reportedly doesn’t like to read, wants to play video games most of the time, has a short attention span, is used to Googling everything, is super tech savvy, and expects to “connect” with his/her friends all the time.
Sounds like a typical student to me.
With the exception of having Google to look up information, today’s trailblazing teens remind me an awful lot of the same types of learners we’ve been seeing for at least the past generation now. Why we suddenly think we have to turn everything inside out to accommodate them has very little to do with their learning preferences and a lot more to do with the economics of higher education. The difference between a Gen-Xer toting Cliff notes, watching MTV, and playing Tetris for hours and today’s techie teen is basically Google. Google and Kickstarter. Students like to play video games, connect with their friends, and find a way to escape reading assignments just like they’ve been doing for at least the past 25 years. Did Higher Ed scramble to reinvent itself over the revolutionary batch of learners that invaded the 1990’s? Nope. Did faculty fear being displaced and replaced by the Brave New World of Gameboy wielding pre-teens? No, they did not. Do students really learn differently now that they can tweet and gram about daily life? For one thing, they have more pathways to learning available to them.
Humans are highly adaptable. Until very recently, we learned everything we needed to know to survive by watching and interacting with our tribe.
Add in a few more shockwaves to the collective psyche from the journalism business and a few other industries and you finally get to Higher Ed. So let’s not give too much credit to the firebreathing fourth graders out there. There’s been plenty of fear going around for a long time now and it’s finally roosting in the vines of our ivy covered lecture halls. Should we be afraid? Probably. But not of them. They may have a few more apps and a way to access information, but they aren’t the problem. We need to be coming together as a thoughtful reflective community to chart a new direction, not out of fear, but out of a desire to lead and move forward towards something beneficial. Without this contemplative piece, we will continue to create a place that doesn’t have space for all of the people in it. We’ve been very good at doing this so far. We will continue to alienate, degrade, and disregard the most vulnerable and cast aside everyone but the fastest, strongest, and smartest. We need to produce a generation of thinkers who cares about this issue. The formation of morals, values, ethics, and compassion is probably the most important issue of our time.