ICT in Education

All about: Planning for neomillenial learning styles (Dede 2005)

April 22, 2007

Dede, C. (2005). Planning for neomillennial learning styles. Educause Quarterly, 28(1).

This article explores (in a slightly tech-evangelical but nonetheless interesting way) possible uses in education of emerging technologies including MUVEs (MultiUser Virtual Environments – ie Second Life), Wireless/Mobile devices and ongoing developments in online content.

It also looks at the way “neomillenials” – also referred to by some as digital natives – interact with current technology and ways that education may be able to (or indeed need t0) adapt to provide learners with more complete and satisfying learning experiences.

Emerging learning styles:

• Fluency in multiple media and in simulation-based virtual settings
• Communal learning involving diverse, tacit, situated experience, with knowledge distributed across a community and a context as well as within an individual
• A balance between experiential learning, guided mentoring and collective reflection
• Expression through nonlinear, associational webs of representations
• Co-design of learning experiences personalised to individual needs and preferences

Main points:

• Internet is reshaping information gathering/learning styles – more seeking, sieving, synthesising than before.
  
• Digital media encourages multitasking (instant messaging, websurfing, emailing, listening to music while reading)
• Too much multitasking might lead to cognitive overload
• New emphasis on customised, personalised environments – learners wanting to shape their own courses, decide what they learn and need for universities to cater to this
• Millenial students – those born after 1982
• Emerging media types foster deeper psychological immersion – particularly 3D spaces but also “augmented reality” created by the expanding use of mobile devices and networks
• Mobile Wireless devices (MWDs) can be used to access context specific information while out in the real world
• Potential for networked MWDs to create connections between people with common interests
• People have multifaceted identities – real world and online ones
• Enhances access to information across space and time
• Possible to create interactions in virtual space that are impossible in reality – eg dealing with a chemical spill in busy neighbourhood – scenario based learning
• MMOGs growing in popularity (apparently Second Life hasn’t quite hit the stands at the time of writing)
• Use of virtual interactive environments, modelling museums, labs, historical simulations
• Coming phenomena of ubiquitous computing – being networked everywhere
• Encouraging non-linear communication – e.g. authoring a simulation and creating a webpage to express understanding rather than writing a paper)

Suggested implications of these changes:

• need to redesign physical spaces – specialised spaces less necessary (e.g. library reading rooms)
• places and objects will have more information attached to them
• networked collaboration enhances accessibility
• new forms of assessment required – beyond written papers – which incorporate greater peer based assessment
• need for widespread wireless network infrastructure
• move to more personalisable learning experiences
• move towards more emphasis on knowledge sharing between students
• more “real-world”context based case studies in assessment

My thoughts:

Generally there are a lot of interesting ideas here and Dede is well aware that a number of the changes proposed would involve a significant reshaping of current educational practice and systems.

I often get the feeling when reading educational theory – particularly of a constructivist bent – that it is either somewhat divorced from chalkface reality (overly theoretical) or conceived with motivated post-graduate university students in mind, rather than secondary or early tertiary students.

In the VET context, we work with learners with more basic foundation skills in learning (adolescents fresh out of high school or workers reskilling themselves) and some of the principles about student directed learning and customised courses seem quite irrelevant to learners – and highly impractical for teachers.

I question the assumption that until now learners have only taken information from narrow channels such as a textbook or two or their teacher – this fails to give teachers any credit for ingenuity at all. Multimedia in one form or another has been used in classrooms for more than 100 years.

Information processing is definitely an important skill in this age – we have access to more of it than ever before. Neomillenials may well have more effective skills at processing this and this is something to consider in designing their learning – the dangers of cognitive overload should also be taken seriously as well though.

Do neomillenials really take in and comprehend all the information that they process or is it taken more superficially?
Do people (we) have shorter attention spans now and what does this mean to learning?

I appreciate the business imperatives of providing more personalised and customised content as well – this is certainly going to be appealing to learners – however I question the assumption that learners always know what they don’t know and also what they need to know.

Research has indicated that learners don’t always get in right when deciding what they need to know and that more often than not they get it wrong when determining the best way to learn things that they want to know. Sometimes that topics that seem the least interesting to a learner are the most important in terms of actually being able to use a set of skills or knowledge.

When courses and curricula are designed by “experts”, these are people who are able to bring valuable experience to the process and know better the things that learners need to focus on. It might be worth allowing learners to shape the order in which content is presented but the body of the content is probably something that they should be prepared to accept as coming from someone who knows more. If you don’t enter higher education to know more than you currently know, why go there at all?

The matter of administering and assessing such systems (unless we are dealing with chunks of knowledge) also seems to have been brushed aside but is a key consideration in making these changes actually happen. Teachers don’t want to do more work than they are already doing – often times they simply can’t – and will vote with their feet if a system is imposed on them. (Such as one revolving around personalised learning packages)

How can employers make considered assessments of a qualification if it’s significantly different to everyone elses?
Let’s not make learners too important in the process of figuring out what they have actually learnt – just because they feel as though they know enough about something doesn’t necessarily make it so. If a team of medical students successfully completes an operation, are we sure that each student can do it all?

Looking at education another way, if the knowledge of the world (the developed world at least) is at our fingertips, do we need to learn anything more than how to access it and understand it? (Of course, if the access to this info breaks, society could be in trouble)

Human adoption of technology systems that put people in contact with random strangers sharing common interests (in terms of mobile wireless devices) has been hyped for a few years now but really hasn’t taken off. People do make connections online more freely based on common interests – is this because it is a less threatening environment? I think that people are naturally cautious about strangers and prefer the online buffer. This may differ in a learning environment – I’d like to hear some ideas for ways that this might work though.

Notions of access are very powerful and encouraging – current technological developments certainly offer great promise for involving more people in education who have been disadvantaged. We shouldn’t forget those who are technologically disadvantaged as well (The One Laptop Per Child scheme is encouraging here) as this is a key divide.

Simulations that go beyond what is possible or practical in reality are very encouraging – one of the things I regularly discuss with teachers is that if using technology doesn’t add something to a learning experience that wasn’t already there, why use it? The possibility of developing resources and simulations that mean you can do something new – such as a massive chemical spill in a big city – are tremendous.

I suspect that many of Dede’s suggestions for implementations (particularly large scale ones) are designed as ambit claims – things like getting rid of computer labs and reading rooms in libraries work on an assumption that 100% of learners want to go down this path. If we are going to talk about providing personalised learning, what about these people?
This is more about provoking thought and discussion and is fair enough.

I read a comment recently (no idea where) which made the point that computers should simply be seen as another classroom resource and that we don’t talk about taking the students to the pencil lab. (Although isn’t that the Art room?). This is true, although I’d say that if pencils cost $1000 each, it might be a little different.

Personalisable learning – worth considering RSS feeds and related widgets, still not sure what personalised learning environments are or how they work but I guess this comes into the picture.

This article is definitely worth a read, I just wonder if it isn’t a little divorced from chalkface practice – or putting it more nicely, a little idealised.

Entry Filed under: 911, constructivism, games in education, information landscape, interaction, learning environment, multimedia, technology, video. .