Millenial Learners : Teaching More Relevant to Pupils

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Recommended: Effects of technology in classrooms

Modern educators enter through the doors of their classrooms into a portal of the past. Many modern classrooms look anything but modern. Institutional walls, rigid desks, tiled floors, and the ever-present chalkboards greet the modern student as they greeted his or her parents, grandparents, and perhaps great-grandparents. However, our students are not the same as their parents, grandparents, or great-grandparents--they are Generation Y, more commonly referred to as Millennial Learners. These students differ significantly from Gen X-ers represented in the new ranks of educators and Baby Boomers who comprise the older generation of educators (Moorman & Horton, 2007). Millennial Learners are "digital natives", that is they have always been plugged in. They have been raised with Internet access, cell phones, and easily-accessed information. Their lives are vastly different from what our forefathers of education envisioned when many common academic practices were established hundreds of years ago and yet, Millennial Learners continue in the hallowed tradition of academia. Is it any wonder, then, when students feel disconnected and disenfranchised by the educational institutions pitted against them? What is our responsibility as educators of these Millennial Learners? What can we do to reverse the flow of the portal and project our classrooms into the future, rather than relegating them to the past? How do we get educational "buy-in" from our Millennial Learners? The good news is, there are many ways to achieve these goals and much research to support such endeavors.

Why We Need To Care

Millennial Learners are in a constantly wired state. Research has shown this to be true of affluent Gen Y-ers and low-income Gen Y-e...

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...s. School Library Media Activities Monthly , XXIV (5), 39-41.

Greenhow, C., Walker, J. D., & Kim, S. (2009-10). Millennial Learners and Net-Savvy Teens?: Examining Internet Use Among Low-Income Students. Journal of Computing in Teacher Education , 26 (2), 63-68.

Moorman, G., & Horton, J. (2007). Millennials and How to Teach Them. In J. Lewis, & G. B. Moorman, Adolescent Literacy Instruction: Policies and Promising Practices (pp. 263- 283). International Reading Association.

Morris, L. V. (2006). Have the Devices Changed the Learner? Innovative Higer Education , 31 (1).

Reiser, R. A., & Dempsey, J. V. (2007). Trends and Issues in Instructional Design and Technology. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Pearson.

Slebodnick, M., & Riehle, C. F. Creating Online Tutorials at Your Libraries: Software Choices and Practical Implications. Management , 49 (1), 33-51.

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