Students with Neomillennial Learning Styles and Virtual High Schools

Dede, C. (2005). Planning for neomillennial learning styles: Shifts in students’ learning style will prompt a shift to active construction of knowledge through mediated immersion. Educause Quarterly, 28(1). Retrieved on March 20, 2005 from http://www.educause.edu/apps/eq/eqm05/eqm0511.asp?bhcp=1

In the above article, Chris Dede (the Timothy E. Wirth Professor in Learning Technologies in the Technology in Education Program at Harvard University) argues that there is a new type of learner appearing in our schools and universities. These students aren't based upon demographic references, such as the baby boomers, Generation X'ers, or the children of the echo (see David Foot's Boom, bust, and echo - http://www.footwork.com/book.html ). These students are grouped based upon a set of learning characteristics and can include the next generation of students that we now see in our educational institutions, but also baby boomers, Generation X'ers, or the children of the echo.

The learning characteristics that Dede believes makes these students different include:

• Fluency in multiple media and in simulation-based virtual settings
• Communal learning involving diverse, tacit, situated experience, with knowledge distributed across a community and a context as well as within an individual
• A balance among experiential learning, guided mentoring, and collective reflection
• Expression through nonlinear, associational webs of representations
• Co-design of learning experiences personalized to individual needs and preferences

In his article, he poses the question:

In the standard “world to the desktop” interface, which is now complemented by multiuser virtual environments in which people’s avatars interact with each other, computer-based agents, and digital artifacts in a simulated context and augmented realities in which mobile wireless devices infuse overlays of digital data on physical real-world settings; how can higher education institutions prosperly use these emerging technologies to deliver instruction matched to the increasingly “neomillennial” learning styles of their students?

As he develops the concept throughout the article, he states that there will need to be some changes in how we deliver education in order to address the issue of using emerging technologies to deliver instruction matched to the increasingly “neomillennial” learning styles of our students. The changes that he suggests are:

• Co-design: Developing learning experiences students can personalize
• Co-instruction: Utilizing knowledge sharing among students as a major source of content and pedagogy
• Guided learning-by-doing pedagogies: Infusing case-based participatory simulations into presentational/assimilative instruction
• Assessment beyond tests and papers: Evaluating collaborative, nonlinear, associational webs of representations; utilizing peer-developed and peer-rated forms of assessment; using student-initiated assessments to provide formative feedback on faculty effectiveness

As individuals who are interested in or directly involved in virtual high schools, we are in the trenches with many students who have naturally gravitated to our medium of delivery because they exhibit the characteristics of neomillennial learners. So I ask the question to all of you...

In the virtual high school environment, how are we using emerging technologies to deliver instruction matched to the increasingly “neomillennial” learning styles of our students?

Tags: virtual school, cyber school, high school, education