Dispatch from the Digital Frontier: Insights From and About Generation Z

Ifyou haven’t started thinking about “social learning” models orabout a strategy for deploying your learning programs, in whole or inpart, for access via mobile hand-held devices, data from a recentsurvey might provoke a rising sense of urgency. A faculty committeeat University of Missouri’s School of Journalism recently askedstudents and faculty to complete a questionnaire about theirtechnology usage and their opinions regarding technology ineducation. From my reading, some important themes emerge that havebig implications. (Thanks to Mike McKean and Hui-Hsien Tsai forallowing me access to the data they collected.)

Context first.Journalism students at Mizzou (The University of Missouri) must havea Mac laptop and a handheld mobile device (preferably an iPhone oriPod Touch) to enter the program in their junior year. Journalismcourses often involve technology, sometimes intensively so, asstudents learn the tools of their craft. Perhaps it’s notsurprising, then, that 97.8% prefer taking courses that involvemoderate or extensive usage of technology, with 72% of respondentssaying they either agree or strongly agree with the statement, “Theuse of IT improves my learning.” At the J-school, technologyquestions focus on “how,” not “whether.”

Social networkingis the most often-reported usage of technology by students,regardless of device: 85.2% of respondents said they use socialnetworking sites “several times a day.” Fully 60.1% of studentsclassify themselves as “experts” in social networking (as opposedto 15.2% of faculty, not incidentally). Regardless of ability, 60.6%of students say they use social networking for their classes.

Whenquestions focused specifically on mobile phones, 92.5% of studentsreported using their phones to access social networking sites, 82.7%send text messages “several times a day” (as opposed to 17.1% whosend instant messages that frequently), and 65.9% use their mobilesfor tweeting. Notably, 76.6% of student respondents agree or stronglyagree that a mobile phone is useful for learning; 57%, by turn,disagree or strongly disagree with the statement, “I don’t seethe benefits [of using mobile devices for learning purposes].”83.9% find “mobile learning” easy to use.

Today’sJ-school students are at the leading edge of what some call theDigital Generation, or Generation Z. Educators and sociologists arebeginning to weigh in on the defining characteristics of thisgeneration. These include: a technology-dominated lifestyle to theexclusion of outdoor activities (which is contributing to an alarmingincrease in obesity); an emphasis on individualism over collaborationand team work; self-direction; constant multi-tasking and a syndromethat some call “acquired ADD”; impatience; and being hard toteach. These traits are evidenced by some other student responses tothe Mizzou questionnaire. For example, 75.8% say they learn betterwhen course activities require them to conduct their own researchusing multiple resources. Contributing to discussion forums, blogs,wikis, and receiving feedback – the description provided by thequestionnaire for “collaborative activities with others” – wasalso identified by 61.6% as enabling them to learn better.

Already,members of Generation Z are entering the workforce, bringing theirexperiences and expectations with them. Presumably, they share thesentiments of questionnaire respondents in anticipating their usageof mobile phones in the next three years, 66.5% of whom “intend touse a cell phone or other handheld Internet device for learningpurposes in the next three years,” and 78.2% of whom “predict”their use of such technology for “course activities” willincrease in the same period, at which time they will, presumably,have entered the workforce. Further, 78% “plan to do many things ona cell phone or other handheld Internet device that [they] currentlydo on a laptop or desktop computer.” What inhibits them from doingso now? 62% cite the cost of the data service.

Theimplications of these findings for eLearning and mLearning aresignificant, given the strong differences in behavior, lifestyle, andexpectation between Gen Z and their older siblings of Gen Y. WhereasGen Y-ers are highly proficient technology users, these incomingmembers of our workforce are not just confident in their use oftechnology, they can’t imagine life – or work – without it.Mobile Internet devices, whatever the form factor, are escalating inprominence for them. They’ve experienced the value of mobiledevices as learning tools and see themselves continuing to learnusing these same and more advanced technologies. The prospect ofthese tools not being available to them seems never to have enteredtheir minds.

Thekinds of learning activities that Generation Z find most effective,while social and collaborative in one sense, are also singular. Forthese people, it’s technology, not co-location, that creates andenables social connection and collaboration, and using mobileInternet-access devices only furthers this view. Moreover, the kindof teamwork that has been a hallmark of Generation Y, indicated by aspirit of “everybody working together” and gaining consensus, hasmorphed into more of an exercise in aggregation that might be summedup in saying, “I do my part, you do your part, then we put theparts together.”

Ifwe are to successfully fold these young people into our workenvironments, we must understand how they function and what motivatesthem, of course. These data offer useful insight into what’s instore for us all as we plan for their arrival.