By Dawn Catlin, MSN, RN, Faculty Nurse Consultant, Kaplan Nursing
This millennial generation has brought several challenges to the higher education system. Prensky (2001) states that “today’s students are no longer the people our education system was designed to teach” (pp. 1). It is evident a paradigm shift in how students are educated is needed. To answer this call, some schools are drastically changing their curriculum to follow a concept-based system while others are changing the way the information is being presented and taught in the classroom. Wilson (2004) asserts that faculty must enhance student learning and engagement, produce learning and not deliver instruction, and recommended 7 principles for engaging activities.
The challenges faced with engaging students in the classroom include faculty apprehension to the new ‘edutainment’ and students that challenge instructors to ‘just tell me what I need to know for the test’. And finally, faculty need to embrace and use more technology in the classroom and meet the students where they are in the world. Here is a link to the top 100 tools for learning in 2014. I encourage you to check it out. There were several I had never even heard of before.
References:
Prensky, Marc. (2001). Digital natives, digital Immigrants. Retrieved from http://www.marcprensky.com/writing/Prensky%20-%20Digital%20Natives,%20Digital%20Immigrants%20-%20Part1.pdf
Top 100 tools for learning in 2014. Retrieved from http://c4lpt.co.uk/top100tools/
Wilson, M. E. (2004). Teaching, learning, and millennial students. New Directions For Student Services, (106), 59-71.
