The 21st-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 21st 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, 21st 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. 21st 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.
References
Oblinger, D. (2003). Boomers, Gen-Xers, and Millennials: Understanding the 'new students'. EDUCAUSE Review , (38)4, 36–47.
Project, N. H. (2013). NMC Horizon Project Short List: 2013 Higher Education Edition.
Thursday, March 24, 2016
