The 21st-Century Student Experience

Taken from http://d20innovation.d20blogs.org/2012/11/03/assessing-21st-century-skills/

The 21^st-Century Student Experience

The voice of the active learner

By Prof. Jonathan Acuña-Solano, M. Ed.

School of English

Faculty of Social Sciences

Universidad Latina de Costa Rica

Thursday, March 24, 2016

Post 238

“What do we know about today’s ‘new students’? Perhaps most obviously, we know that these students have been heavily influenced by information technology” (Oblinger, 2003). But what happened to us, pre-digital era learners? What was it like to be a student when we were in college, say, around the 80s? And now that we are in charge of the education of millennials, we “current higher education administrators, as well as many faculty and staff, represent a different generation from the majority of the student population” (Oblinger, 2003); our “different generation” had very different learning, studying habits when compared to what 21^st learners do.

Pre-digital era learners had a different way of doing things! We college students in the 80s (and before) studied differently. Though those learning, studying approaches we got to use at that time are still on force nowadays, most –if not all- of our studying was paper-based in a way. We had books, photocopies, notebooks with notes and mind maps, notepads to jot down ideas, scrap paper to work on practices or summaries, flashcards, index cards with notes and terminology to learn, and so on. When contrasted to what learners do today, I see the evolution of education and how it is being held back by our old-fashioned practices. Students now have eBooks or PDF docs, Google Docs to keep notes, practice, and write their summaries, apps for flashcards and terminology on their smartphones and tablets, pages to create and collaborate with peers in the creation of mind maps, and so. The way we used to study and learn is indeed a mere vision of what the past was to us.

And when did we study or went to college? Back in my college days, having a job and going to the university was simply unheard of. That is, at least in the public university system in Costa Rica whose schedules seemed to suit the professors’ agendas rather than the students’, one had to be a full-time learner; working was out of question since it was impossible to have a job and take a full block of subjects per semester. But nowadays, 21^st Century college students do work and pursue a college degree. As someone who did work at the time of my college years, I had to enroll just a few courses to be able to get a part-time job and support my family. But today, not only do college students have a fulfilling university life but continue with their social and working lives, simultaneously. And when it comes to studying time, as we probably did before, we can study anywhere, anytime, but with different tools. 21^st Century learners have access to CMSs (Content Management Systems), LMSs (Learning Management Systems), wikis, blogs, web pages, and so on, right there on their smartphones and tablets. We just had access to our notepads with notes, summaries, notebooks, and books. The way we used to make use of time is so far away swallowed by the mist of time and quite unpractical in the eyes of today’s pupils.

Where did we study in our college days? And where do our learners do it today? In hindsight, I can see myself sitting at home in my room with my books, notebooks, papers, cards, and so on at my desk. If I came across a piece of information that was not clear, I had to wait for the next lesson to ask the professor for clarification, or if I had a partner’s landline phone number, I called hoping my classmate would be home to see if I could get an explanation or example for me. If a big project was to be developed in groups, we had to agree on a working meeting at the campus library or elsewhere to put our minds to work. But, boy, times have indeed changed! Learners can now study literally anywhere, anytime. Learning for them has become synchronous and asynchronous; clarification of doubts can be immediate with or without the assistance of the instructor or peer, especially with the abundance of sites, such as You Tube, to get tutorials, explanation videos, and the like. Students do not phone peers anymore; they contact each other by means of Whatsapp or Viber or Google Hangouts, or any other similar app. And to meet, they do it now virtually, avoiding commuting and nasty traffic jams; campus libraries are now deserted and at times underused by the college community. Grandpa would probably be perplexed at what his grandchildren (my kids) do to study and pursue a college degree.

If students today are the way they have been depicted above, can we all imagine what college students would be like in 20 years? Though I am not H. G. Wells who foresaw nuclear power or Aldous Huxley who foresaw genetic engineering, I can foretell that education will have changed drastically in less than a decade. College life and studies will be full of flipped classrooms, connected to mobile apps and tablet/smartphone computing; more and more learners will be enrolled in MOOCs. Blended, hybrid, and online education will be the norm. Based on the MNC Horizon Project Short List (Project, 2013), augmented reality, game-based learning, the Internet of Things, Learning Analytics will have become another norm by then, or even perhaps new emerging educational practices will have been adopted and some of the practices on the list, abandoned. And for sure, wearable technology, 3D printing, flexible displays, and next generation batteries will be fully embedded in our teaching, instructional practices. If we based our predictions on how others have failed to forecast, we can simply say that the future of education will not be like whatever we think it will be like, but it will be awesome to see how students will be learning at that time in the future.

Are Costa Rican public and private universities ready for the many changes and innovations in education to come? Well, the answer to this is rather elusive. Somehow there are higher education institutions in my country that are getting prepare to serve and engage the learners who will come to classrooms in the future. For sure the Laureate family of colleges in Costa Rica is on its way to become ready to face the challenges, but some other institutions need to think about the changes to come and how they can cope with them to really prepare students for jobs and new positions of the future.