The Impact of Digital Literacy in Education (Part 1)

With an understanding of who the Millennials are and the characteristics that differentiate them from previous generations of learners, it is important to also consider how these difference will impact education and the way teaching and learning is conducted.  Millennials are entering an educational environment that is not prepared for the way they learn and the way they communicate.  This places heavy demands on educators as they are in a constant struggle to combine the content of the old curriculum in a way that the Millennial learners can relate to and learn from (Prensky, 2001).  This is one of the main issues as the Millennial generation does not respond well to the traditional teaching methods, such as the lecture, that is so prevalent in today’s classroom (Pratt & Pratt, 2009).  According to Price (2010), most Millennials prefer to learn from a variety of teaching methods including multimedia tools such as podcasting, videos, and other online tools.  Price (2010) also noted that one of her learners even successfully navigated the first three weeks of her course and passed the first exam without even purchasing the required text. This demonstrates that faculty must seek other means to communicate lessons to the Millennials rather than relying heavily on texts, as they have done in the past.  Faculty can use activities such as wikis, blogs, games, and social networking tools as optional means to disseminate the lessons to these learners.

Along the same lines of desiring flexibility and variety in lessons the Millennials seem to prefer the same variety and flexibility in their assignments. Millennials are demanding more creative assignments than a typical paper and prefer assignments that are more exploratory and experimental in nature (Novotney, 2010). In addition, Millennial learners prefer options for assignments.  For example, a faculty member could offer team presentations in lieu of individual ones, allow learners to create a wiki or blog instead of writing a paper, or ask learners to respond to each other or present their ideas via podcasts (Wilson & Gerber, 2008).  Millennial learners also want the ability to customize their learning and desire the assignments and activities to be relevant to their own lives (Wilson & Gerber, 2008). All this together can allow the infusion of technology and media into the teaching and learning activities that curricula demand.

As faculty begin exploring alternatives to text based courses issues arise in what services the educational institutions permit access to.  Most colleges, universities, computer labs, and libraries place heavy restrictions on the use of the Internet and may even limit sites such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and MySpace  (Considine, Horton, and Moorman, 2009).  By limiting access to the technology and resources the Milliennials are accustomed to using and still relying heavily on text based materials dramatically alters the way Millennials communicate, work, research, learn, and live. 

Next week, this article will continue with an analysis of how some institutions are meeting the challenging new needs of Millennial learners.

--CJ Bracken

Instructional Designer, JSRCC

References

Considine, D., Horton, J., & Moorman, G. (2009). Teaching and reading the millennial generation through media literacy. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, 52 (6), 471-481.

Novotney, A. (2010). Engaging the millennial learner. Monitor on Psychology, 41 (3), 60-61.

Pratt, D., & Pratt, D. (2009). Managing millennial students in the college classroom. Proceedings of the ATE annual meeting, Dallas, TX.  Retrieved from http://www.allacademic.com//meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/2/7/7/7/4/pages277745/p277745-1.php

Prensky, M. (2001). Digital natives, digital immigrants. On the Horizon, 9 (5), 1-6.

Price, C. (2010). Why don't my student think I'm groovy: The new R's for engaging millennial learners. Teaching of Psychology, 9, 29-34

Williams, P., & Rowlands, I. (2008). The information behavior of the researcher of the future. London: British Library and Joint Information Systems Committee.

Wilson, M., & Gerber, L. E. (2008). How generational theory can improve teaching: Strategies for working with the "millennials". Currents in Teaching and Learning, 1 (1), 29-44.