Generational Differences and our instructional
responsibility
Before reading “ Digital
Natives, Digital Immigrants” by Marc Presnsky and “Do Generational
Differences Matter in Instructional Design?” by Professor Thomas C. Reeves,
it would be an understatement to claim how ignorant I was to this hotly
contested topic. I truly had no idea such a feverish debate has been in the
heads of scholars and writers in the world of educational technology. I guess
it surprises me that the debate is so fierce. I understand positions arguing
against the generalities and vague claims Marc Prensky makes in his
writing. For instance, “There are
hundreds of examples of the digital immigrant accent. They include printing out
your email, needing to print out a document written on the computer in order to
edit (rather than just editing on the screen)” (Prensky, 2001). Well according to this logic, I am a digital
immigrant, however based on his timeline of whom he considers digital natives;
his stereotypes of me can also be found.
I have grown up with video games, cell phones, tablets, and technology
induced multimedia. I also print out
documents from my computer to proof read. It is my personal preference, so how does
this make me a digital immigrant? While
I can argue his writing is less than ideal from an academic standard, I cannot
argue that there are in fact some valid statements from my point of view in his
article. I like the simplicity of the
definition he gives what a digital native is.
“Our students today are all “native speakers” of the digital language of
computers, video games, and the internet”. I agree, for those fortunate enough
to grow up in a household that can offer their children and teenagers access to
technology that these students flow from device to device with an ease that
experts have, and are truly early adopters. I can visualize his definition of
digital natives with faces of former students even. Where he lost me was when he labeled “all”
students as native speakers. For one
thing, the definition of a student is incredibly broad. For example, let me introduce to you
Bob. Bob worked at a local CD printing
plant for thirty-seven years. If we were
to use the distinguishing generational guidelines of Baby Boomers, Millennial
and so on, Bob would be classified as a Baby Boomer. When that local factory laid-off five hundred
employees, Bob found himself as part of the downsizing. The workers were given
a tuition plan that involved going back to school to learn a trade or venture
into a new career. Now Bob finds his way
into my classroom, a classroom that is a hybrid of educational technology and
traditional lecture. Mr. Prensky, Bob is a student would you not agree? He did not play Super Mario or Legend of Zelda.
He has watched cell phones evolve from
being located in your car, a bag, and finally its very own freestanding device.
He has observed all of this unfold from a distance without taking part in the
technology. Bob is a digital immigrant,
but a student nonetheless. We can label
him anything we want based on his generation, but during any period of his life
he can still fit the definition of a student and a learner. So I would argue we
be careful when labeling such a broad definition of “all” students, as Mr.
Prensky does. It is clear not “all” students are k-12 or traditional college
students.
“Digital Immigrant teachers assume that
learners are the same as they have always been and that the same methods that
worked for the teachers when they were students will work for their students
now”. (Prensky, 2001). During my academic career at the Pennsylvania State University,
I can say based on experience with the exception of three professors for four
years, every class had a similar set up: reading from the text, text examples,
and then an exam. My problem with claiming this as an academic wide issue is
that I can only vouch for one university, one program, and that programs
professors that I specifically had. To
group all professors as digital immigrants without proper research or
statistics to back it up is again unfair to worldwide academics.
Let us
fast forward to Bob’s last day of classes and his graduation with an associate’s
degree. Baby Boomer Bob now has an online
resume, blog, Facebook, and RSS feed tied into all topics criminal
justice. While he was a digital
immigrant like all of us have to be at some point or another, he still was very
much entitled to the instruction and education all students should receive
regardless of what they are brought up with, or the digital toys they learn
on. My problem with the thought process
of labeling students and people like Bob as digitally incompetent or competent,
is that thought process could map out how we approach educating Bob. Imagine, if because he was a nontraditional student
with a certain time period of birth he had a tailored curriculum based on what
the opinion of his abilities were? What if in his academic career, he only had
to take introduction to computers and that was it? Bob became technological capable because we
have not classified students, because we helped him bridge the gap with
technology, as any good educator should. We helped him find his digital talents
with a structured curriculum that benefits all students’ natives or
immigrant. Twenty percent of households
are still without an internet connection ("Household internet usage,"
2012) so how can we paint such an expansive landscape of what a Post
Millennial, GenMe, and the Digital
Native student is, if the facts themselves are still developing. My final concerns regarding these two
readings are they try to paint an exact image and argue for an exact image of
what students are and how they learn.
There is no such thing. Sure, you
can generalize what a Baby Boomer’s work ethic is and how he might learn in a
given environment, but as long as there are exceptions to the rule, tailoring
instructional design to support a specific demographic based and their “generation”
is almost as bad as basing instructional design on whether a student is a boy
or girl. When the Silent Generation,
Boom Generation, 13th Generation, and Millennial Generation sit in a
classroom, they are all students, and like any classroom, they all have a
unique set of needs, disadvantages, advantages, experiences, and learning
styles. Educators should design
instruction to meet all learning style, whether it’s using technology to
benefit them all, or not using technology because using it just to use it can be counterproductive,
the truth remains they are all still “students”.
The beauty of being able to write
this as part of a class exercise and a blog is I am not bound by the code of
academic journals. I can freely use my opinion without the painstaking research
that goes in to referencing other academic journal to support how I feel about
the topic. Again, I can only share my
opinion. That opinion is simple. Do generational differences matter in
instructional design? Yes, I believe they do, because they help us understand
what truly matters most, the student.
Should we tailor instructional designed based solely on generational
differences? Absolutely not. In the
words of an 83-year-old woman (yes I asked her age after our conversation), I
sat next to on a mall bench once. “Do you follow Connan O’Brian on twitter? He is absolutely hilarious, he just sent this
picture to his followers of a kitten with its head in a piece of bread, I just
love my phone for this stuff,” She said. Now I realize digital immigrants can
always learn to benefit and enjoy technology the same as natives.
REFRENCES
Reeves, T. C. (2007). Do generational differences matter in
instructional design. Manuscript submitted for publication, Department of
Educational Psychology and Instructional Technology, The University of Georgia,
Athens, GA, Retrieved from http://it.coe.uga.edu/~treeves/
Prensky, M. (2001). Digital natives, Digitial Immigrants. On the
Horizon, 9(5)
U.S. Census Burea, (2012). Household internet usage
(nformation and Communications 723). Retrieved from website:
http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2012/tables/12s1155.pdf
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