Why the Net Gen Rhetoric is Dangerous

In his article, Making Way for the Millennials: How Today's Students are Shaping Higher Education Space, Persis Rickes relies on the largely unfounded claims about the net generation to argue for re-designing campus physical spaces. Here are some examples:

"Given their comfort level with technology and penchant for team-oriented behavior, Millennials are substantively changing instructional space—as well as the very nature of instruction. Because today’s students socialize, study, and collaborate in groups, the learning environment is no longer place-bound. This translates to a need for multipurpose spaces for group activities, including small group/seminar rooms and blended social/academic spaces. As veteran multitaskers, students do not view spaces as single purpose in nature."

"Because Millennials prefer to learn and work in teams, small group rooms are needed that can be used as breakout space during class or for study and project work after class has ended. "

"To adapt to a new generation of students, the library has become another partner in collaborative learning. Given the penchant of Millennials to multitask, it frequently serves as a quasi-student union space—and vice versa. "

Rickes relies largely on the work of Howe & Strauss which has been critiqued elsewhere in this blog. I do not question the need for learning spaces that are fit for purpose and that meet the needs of today's learners but let's base our planning decisions on what we know about our learners not on questionable claims about an entire generation.

Educating the Net Generation - Australian Research Project

It's too bad this research project has the same title as the book by Oblinger and Oblinger because, unlike the book, this research project does a much better job of providing some evidence-based understanding of how this generation is using digital technology and the implications for teaching and learning.

The project, which is based at the University of Melbourne has investigated how "commencing first year students and their teachers use traditional and emerging technology-based tools in their everyday lives and to support student learning and drawn on the expertise of teachers and the results of this investigation to develop and implement pedagogically sound, technology-based tools to enhance student learning in local learning environments."

One of the outputs of the project is a handbook, Educating the Net Generation: A Handbook of Findings for Practice and Policy which is available for download. The researchers have also published a number of articles and made several presentations at academic conferences.

Key findings of this research project:

1. The rhetoric that university students are Digital Natives and university staff are Digital Immigrants is not supported.
2. There is great diversity in students’ and staff experiences with technology, and their preferences for the use of technology in higher education.
3. Emerging technologies afford a range of learning activities that can improve student learning processes, outcomes, and assessment practices.
4. Managing and aligning pedagogical, technical and administrative issues is a necessary condition of success when using emerging technologies for learning.
5. Innovation with learning technologies typically requires the development of new learning and teaching and technology-based skills, which is effortful for both students and staff.
6. The use of emerging technologies for learning and teaching can challenge current university policies in learning and teaching and IT.

Social to Learning Technology Transfer Not Automatic

Back in August 2008 I posted a link to two Australian conference presentations based on research done by Gregor Kennedy and colleagues. Here's an article in the Australian Journal of Educational Technology that reports on that research, First Year Students Experience with Technology: Are They Really Digital Natives.

One of the key conclusions of this study is consistent with the findings of our research:

More research is needed to determine the specific circumstances under which students would like their 'living technologies' to be adapted as 'learning technologies'. The positive association between students' use of technology and their preference for its use at University leaves unanswered the question as to whether students' everyday skills with emerging technologies will correspond to skills associated with beneficial, technology based learning. As noted by a number of authors (Kirkwood & Price, 2005; Katz, 2005) the transfer from a social or entertainment technology (a living technology) to a learning technology is neither automatic nor guaranteed. These issues point to many unresolved issues that warrant further investigation.

Read the full article.

The New Millennium Learner

New Millennium Learner is the OECD term for Net Gen Learner. The OECD Centre for Educational Research and Innovation (CERI) has an NML project that aims to "analyse this new generation of learners and understand their expectations and attitudes. The background paper published in 2006 for this project is one of the few papers on this topic that avoids going overboard with calls for radical transformation. Although a bit long-winded, the policy recommendations are measured and thoughtful and include:

1. Bridging the gap between NML experiences of ICT-mediated inter-personal communication and knowledge management inside and outside classrooms by enriching schools’ range of available ICT devices and services, and by allowing room for using them in a variety of educational experiments and innovative practices.
2. Making arrangements to better take into account NML voices regarding how education should be.
   
3. Addressing gender and socio-economic imbalances.
4. Creating incentives for the software industry to develop educational software for a vast range of devices (from computers to cellular phones) that try to apply the principles that make video-games so attractive and successful among NML.
5. Engaging initial and in-service teacher training institutions in all these processes.

I do have concerns about this paper, however. Like most of the net gen literature it does not seriously question the underlying premise that this is a generational issue. In fact, the paper begins with the premise that there is a New Millennium Learner and that we need to define and characterize it. Although later in the paper the question is asked: is this "a generation-wide phenomenon: can the term be applied to cover all members of the generation?", the evidence used to answer it is sketchy at best: percentage of young people using computers and the Internet; the main uses of computers (information seeking, e-mail and instant messaging); and use of alternative devices such as cell phones. This kind of data says nothing about the impact on learning and does not support the many other claims that are made about this generation, some of which are repeated in this paper: preference for multimedia over text, expertise with multitasking, need for immediate feedback. The paper also repeats the claims about changes in social and personal values made by Tapscott and others: the NML is particularly hopeful, self-assured, determined etc. but then concludes, "there seems to be no empirical evidence yet to support this."

Overall the message of this paper is a bit contradictory. Unfounded claims are repeated and then dismissed but the basic premise of the existence of a distinct generation that needs our attention and requires policy responses remains unquestioned. On a more positive note, I was pleased to see a short discussion of socio-economic and gender issues. These are not often mentioned in the net gen literature.

Communication Preferences of Postsecondary Learners: Are Net Gen Learners Really that Different?

We presented at the Canadian Network for Innovation in Education (CNIE) conference in Ottawa today. Here's the presentation.

View more presentations from Mark Bullen.

The Net Gen and Web 2.0

Here's more evidence that suggests the need for skepticism when it comes to the hype about the Net Gen and technology use.

This article in The Social Computing Journal suggests that the growth in use of social networking technologies like Facebook, Twitter and Linked-In is not among the Net Generation but among older users:

"Baby boomers... are embracing popular consumer technology applications nearly 20 times faster than younger generations. Compared to a year ago, Gen Y consumers between the ages of 18 and 24, are decelerating their use of consumer electronics and related services including social networking, blogging, listening to podcasts and posting video on the Internet. Yet, there was a 67 percent increase among baby boomers reading blogs or listening to podcasts."

The article suggests three explanations for this:
1. The Net Gen are not early adopters but rather followers waiting to see what the older, more experienced peers latch on to before they jump in.

2. The Net Gen has an innate sense that too much connectivity and too much time online is unproductive

3. The Net Gen is all about being cool, and these tools are no longer leading edge, and therefore cool.

But maybe the real explanation is that this isn't a generational issue. Bennett et al. (2008), for example, suggest there may be as much variation within generations as between. So perhaps analyzing technology use in this way isn't very helpful. Certainly making educational technology decisions based on generation is not useful.

TLT Conference Presentation - better version

Here's a higher quality version of my presentation to the Teaching and Learning to the Power of Technology conference. It is divided into several six minute segments. I have included the Power Point presentation below.

View more presentations from Mark Bullen.

Net Gen Presentation at TLT Conference

I presented at the Teaching and Learning to the Power of Technology conference in Regina, Saskatchewan this week. The topic generated a lot of interest from the audience. The conference was excellent and the organizers streamed many of the presentations. Mine is available for viewing and the Power Point can be downloaded.

Grown Up Digital Research Methods

In Grown Up Digital, Don Tapscott makes some substantial claims about the Net Generation and its impact on business, education and society in general. He calls for major changes to our educational institutions and to how employers treat employees. His recommendations are based on the results of a $4 million research project. But how was that research conducted?

One of the ways we determine the quality of research is by examining the methods used. We want to be sure the research methodology is appropriate, that appropriate sampling and analysis techniques are used, that there is no bias and that the conclusions are supported by the evidence. But the research that informs Grown Up Digital is proprietary. In other words, it was conducted under contract for several businesses. As a result, only some of the "high level findings and main conclusions" can be shared publicly. This means the reader has little opportunity to assess the quality of the research.

While Tapscott doesn't provide the full details of his methodology that would allow for a proper assessment, he does share some of the methodology:

• Data was gathered from a sample of 7685, composed of randomly selected Internet users, stratifed to avoid gender or socioeconomic bias.
• Interviews were conducted using an online questionnaire.
• Facebook group was used to collect over 200 stories.
• Discussions on a global online network TakingITGlobal were conducted and analyzed

While the sample is large, and the sources varied, there is an obvious problem here. The data was gathered from people who are already engaged with digital technologies: Internet users, Facebook users and participants of an online discussion. This is a biased sample. One of the main goals of the research was to determine how engaged this generation is with digital technology and whether there are generational differences. Might the results have been different if people who aren't active users of the technology were sampled?

This highlights the value of academic research and why we need to be careful about how we use proprietary research. Academic research is subject to peer review and it requires transparency and openness of methods. With proprietary research, it is up to the sponsor to decide what to make publicly available.

An Informed Review of Grown Up Digital

In an earlier post, I took a somewhat skeptical view of Don Tapscott's latest book, Grown Up Digital. I said I was put off by the techno-utopic language but encouraged by the amount of data he had collected. At least one reader took me to task for appearing to pass judgment without having read the book. Fair enough.

Well I"m now making my way through the book so I'm in a positon to make a more informed review. Over the next few days I will post my observations beginning with the following:

According to Tapscott, there are eight "norms" that distinguish the Net Generation from other generations. One of them is what he calls "Scrutiny": "Net Geners are the new scrutinzers. Given the large number of information sources on the Web, not to mention unreliable information - spam, phishers, inaccuracies, hoaxes, scams, and misrepresentations - today's youth have the ability to distinguish fact from fiction...The Net Generation knows to be skeptical whenever they're online." (p. 80)

But he goes even further: "On the Net, children have to search for, rather than simply look at, information. This forces them to develop thinking and investigative skills – and much more. They must become critics. Which Web sites are good? How can I tell what is real and what is fictitious – whether in a data source or in the teenage movie star in a chat session.” (p. 21)

How do we reconcile these claims with the results of a substantial study conducted in the UK that found exactly the opposite:

• the information literacy of young people, has not improved with the widening access to technology: in fact, their apparent facility with computers disguises some worrying problems

• internet research shows that the speed of young people’s web searching means that little time is spent in evaluating information, either for relevance, accuracy or authority

• young people have a poor understanding of their information needs and thus find it difficult to develop effective search strategies as a result, they exhibit a strong preference for expressing themselves in natural language rather than analysing which key words might be more effective

• faced with a long list of search hits, young people find it difficult to assess the relevance of the materials presented and often print off pages with no more than a perfunctory glance at them

The problem is Tapscott's conclusion is not based on the right evidence. The evidence he uses is the Net Gen respondents self-reported online behavior when searching for product information: "Almost two-thirds of Net Geners tell us they search for information about products that interest them before purchase. They compare and contrast product information online; they read blogs, forums and reviews; and they consult friends." (p. 323). But this is hardly evidence of critical thinking skills and highly developed information literacy skills.

More in the coming days.