Educating our Digital Natives

In the context of my work, one of the most pressing issues is designing engaging online learning for our youths, who are also known as digital natives. According to Prensky (2001), this generation is 'used to receiving information fast, like to parallel process and multitask.... and thrive on instant gratification and frequent rewards'.

Even though the pandemic has been around for a year or so, the new variant has caused all of us to plummet back to work from home and home-based learning (HBL). However, I felt that the effectiveness and quality home-based learning has not caught up with physical learning on campus. Besides throwing in a few Ed Tech tools for students during HBL, lecturers are still facilitating HBL just like what they do on campus. However, learners' attention span and how they would like to engage with learning is very different compared to on-campus learning. Youths are more distracted at home, and their home environment may not be conducive for learning. At the same time, institutions may be concerned with giving youths too much freedom and autonomy to manage their learning at home, and thus requires lecturers to conduct synchronous classes for extended hours with scheduled breaks in between.

One solution to redesign learning for synchronous classes is to introduce more asynchronous learning. Even though learners are still required to be present online, there should be more asynchronous sessions in between to allow learners to freely explore materials on their own. Instead of facilitating lessons, and expecting learners to participate as they would in classrooms, Ed Tech tools (such as Padlet) may be used to facilitate asynchronous discussions instead. Instead of getting learners to sit through all the groups' presentations as they would in normal classrooms, we can get learners to record their presentations, and learners can give feedback and comments asynchronously. In short, the mindset for online facilitation in synchronous online classes has to shift to fit the profile of the tech-savvy but easily distracted generations.

Prensky, M. (2001). Digital natives, digital immigrants part 1 (Links to an external site.). On the Horizon, 9(5), 1-6.