The E-learning Curve at Edublogs

A colleague asked me recently “do you take somebody’s age into account when designing and delivering training for them?”

As a learning professional in the IT industry, it’s my job to provide learning resources for the employees in my organization. Broadly speaking, my colleagues were born between 1965 and 1982 - the so-called Generation X cohort, with a number of people born before this date range (who the Americans call ‘Baby Boomers’) and a few - increasing - new hires born after this time, variously called Generation Y, the Net Generation, self-regarding narcissists, Generation Next , depending on who you ask.

My colleague’s question got me thinking: as well as individual learning styles (VAK, multiple intelligences and so on) are there generational learning styles? More specifically, is it the case that the technology you were exposed to as a child has some effect on the way you learn throughout your life? As an extension of this, are learning professionals using the most effective channels to enable learners to develop their skills, knowledge and experience in further education and workplace environments, or are we ‘boxed in’ by unconscious biases determined by the teaching approaches, technologies and media we ourselves were taught with?

I haven’t carried out much research on this question, but have the educational media types and attendant technologies described in Table 1 ‘hard-wired’ each generation’s cognitive processes to acquire knowledge in specific ways?

Table 1. Generational learning modalities

Marc Prensky would say that there is some validity in this. As he asserted in his seminal article Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants, we can say that there is a well-established divide between those born pre- and post-1990 - Gartner, in their 2008 Symposium, recognized that the generation now entering the workplace “think different” (to appropriate a phrase).

Could the same be said for Boomers and Xers and does this effect the ways people of these groups acquire knowledge? I’m a Gen X kid and I guess we were probably the first generation to have “home computers” (Sinclair ZX Spectrum 16K anyone?) and home gaming systems like the Atari, as well as access to machines like the Apple II and the Commodore PET in a classroom environment. I can’t say if having access to this technology changed the way I learned, because using these tools was the way I learned. Similarly, mine was probably the last generation to use log tables in maths class and simultaneously the first generation to use electronic calculators (despite fears at the time that using such gadgets would “weaken the brain” - I kid you not - I heard a teacher use that phrase).

Would I have developed differently if I had been born 10 years earlier and used a slide rule? Or 20 years later, where I could carry out calculations on my mobile phone?

Probably.

I don’t know enough about the learning styles of those born in the Baby Boom years to make a judgement about how differently their early development was affected by their environment and the learning tools available to them, but I would make an educated guess that the ongoing learning needs of that generation would require a different strategy to that of Gen Xers, which in turn would require a different approach to how digital natives learn.

Interesting times ahead.

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