Next Friday, 14th January, I have been invited to present at University's Discovery Days. This event is where new professors to the University present a short presentation and take questions. This year, I will be joining the new professors, not because I am a professor (a goal for the future), but to disseminate one of the pedagogical approaches I take during lectures. If you are interested, read below what I will be discussing and if free come to Dundee and join two days of a variety of presentations related to many different topics.
Today’s generation of learners are social beings who communicate, collaborate, create, co-create and connect using online technologies. This ‘Net Generation’, or Net Gens as Tapscott (2008) defines them, is a generation whose modus operandi is networking with freedom to create and produce content online through ‘infiltered self-expression’. Outwith educational institutions, learners are forming communities through various social media networks where they are creating user-generated content, sharing with their peers, co-creating content already produced, discussing, evaluating, debating and learning from one another.
The ‘Net Generation’ are no longer linear learners, but multi-faceted learners. They have access to large sources of information at their fingertips (Bonk, 2009) and are no longer confined to learning at a specific time and place. They are no longer passive consumers but ‘Digital Natives’ (Prensky, 2001) who simultaneously employ a range of social media to communicate. These social media enable them to be constantly connected to friends and family (Oblinger, 2008) through the use of synchronous and asynchronous technologies. As a result of students’ social experiences, they simply want to communicate and have a voice, however, when they attend lectures communication becomes a very singular aspect where the lecturer is the key communicator of information or opportunities for questions or discussion typically results in only 5% of students responding to 95% of the lecturer’s questions.
The lecture setting was not originally designed to enable social constructivism. Lectures were created to address the problem of large enrollments of students in schools, in the late 1800s, where a standardised curriculum was delivered to large class sizes rather than taught (Horn, 2008). The role of students, in a lecture, was a consumer-style approach to learning, whereby students were expected to listen to retrieve information from the lecturer who imparted knowledge to the crowd resulting in passive non-participatory learning. This hierarchical learning style has been organised this way for many years where, ‘those who know tell those who do not know, and thereby maintain and enhance their own status, while passing on accumulated wisdom and experience’ (Brandes & Ginnis, 1986: 10). While this method may have been efficient, it did not provide an effective learning experience that met the needs of all learners.
Although today’s lectures have changed to try and address the needs of learners, they still replicate many methods of the past: passive learning, knowledge delivery and one way communication. Students are no longer passive consumers of learning. They are no longer content to sit for long periods of time and listen to lectures and take notes but want to be engaged through learning that is interactive, personalised, collaborative, creative and innovative (Trilling & Fadel, 2009). The role of the lecturer is no longer a knowledge delivery role or a one-person show to an attentive audience, but rather the manager, advisor, guider and teacher of a learning community. However, these learning communities are not a new notion brought about by technology. Lave & Wenger’s (1991) ‘communities of practice’ emphasised the collaborative nature of learning from individual to participation in a social world. This community of practice can be in the same locality at the same time, for example a group of students attending a lecture, or in different localities at different times, or a group of students around the world with the same interest using social media tools to discuss and learn from one another. This form of social constructivism, where knowledge and understanding is constructed through the active process of discussing and reflecting with peers, produces a richer learning environment where collaboration and active learning are the drivers of knowledge and higher level thinking skills.
To change lectures from consumer to ‘prosumer’ learning, a shift in pedagogy, from delivering to facilitating, is required. This can be achieved through implementing online technologies, for example Poll Everywhere™ and students’ personal mobile devices, during the lecture to ascertain, ‘What do you know?’, ‘What do you want to know?’ and ‘What do you not understand?’. The use of these technologies allows all students to have a voice amongst the many and enables lecturers to address students’ needs in real time rather than after the event. These collaborative tools enhance the learning process by enabling students to communicate their knowledge and understanding on a professional level by being one of many who contribute to the creation of a whole product. The use of students’ personal mobile phones also provides a vehicle for students to let their voice be heard in the crowd through textual responses displayed on the main lecture screen which can be annonynous or authored. Lecturers can then react to the responses by acknowledging ideas, rectifying misunderstandings, exploring new thinking or deepening current understandings. Finally, due to the collaborative technologies storing discussions and ideas, in an electronic format that can be accessed after the lecture, students can revisit learning to deepen their understanding rather than try to retain only what was verbalised in the lecture setting.
‘Don’t lecture me I’m a 21st century learner’ does not require lectures to change but the lecturer’s pedagogy from non-interactive delivery methods, such as lectures and using Web 1.0, towards an environment that better enables active learning. Students are no longer content with just finding and reading information but want to create and share synchronously rather than asynchronously. ‘The old way of doing things is presentation-driven; information is delivered and tested’ (Solomon, 2007: 21). This method prepares students for jobs that require rote learning, which still has a place in society; however, to compete in a globalised world the skills of communication, collaboration and innovation are also required. ‘The new way is collaboration, with information shared, discussed, refined with others, and understood deeply’ (Solomon, 2007: 21). The lecturer’s role in this process is to provide the correct environment where today’s generation can let their voices be heard using social learning tools of this century. The multiple voices of the crowd, when facilitated and guided by the lecturer, can lead to a far richer learning experience for every individual in that crowd.
To lecture does not guarantee that learning will occur and to learn does not require that one needs to be lectured, however, when lecturing and learning unite, a deeper learning environment occurs.