David,
and this is also great preparation for their future careers as many of them will be working in teams & designing & delivering presentations of many kinds.
Ryan Meers, Ph.D.
Robert,
and this helps us to see that learning can actually be fun & when they see this they will continue to pursue learning.
Ryan Meers, Ph.D.
Because Generation Y expects to be entertained. They have learned lots through entertainment sources and expect that to continue. So experiential learning entertains them.
They are tuned into "What's in it for me?" and sharing experience helps them see the relevance.
Absolutely. Experimental learning is entertaining,exciting and engaging. These are all characteristics that aree appealing to Gen Y.
Gen Y learners like to feel like they are in charge of the learning. By giving them activities like group discussion and presentations, they can deliver the information in their own style. Having autonomy provides a feeling of ownership, which leads to commitment.
Kelvin,
yes, learning through failure is very powerful & a great way for this generation to learn, especially since many of them have not been allowed to fail in their lives.
Ryan Meers, Ph.D.
A lot of the folks here have hit it on the head. The Y Gen just doens't believe until they do it themselves. I use a technique that has the students doing projects and some of them I allow to 'walk right up to the edge for the fire' before I pull them back and show them what was going to happen. I also allow some students to make mistakes and encourage failure so that we as a class can see what that looks like.
Generation Y learnings value experiential learning because they can most relate the lessons to real life. They enjoy knowing how a theory is applicable to their real world. There have been so many cases where a student asks "when am I every going to need to know about calculus?" They don't see the bigger picture and focus typically on the "now" of things and how it can apply to them in that particular moment. For this reason, in order to be an effective teacher, they must be able to relate all of their lessons to some real world application. Otherwise, the students become disengaged.
Their access to information on the Internet is fairly immediate; however, access to individuals who have actually experience with the things that they read about is limited. Hence, being able to share real world and relevant experiences with the students is of value to them.
Charles,
this is great & I've found this to be true also. They will engage with us & the material & the content much better if we break it up & don't fall back on lecture.
Ryan Meers, Ph.D.
May of my students have been exposed to long lectures in the classroom over the years.
When I move beyond this and do something new to convey the lesson to them.
I find they ask more questions and have more participation.
In a hands-on career like physical therapy, people need that experiential learning to be able to apply what they have read and seen during their forays into the internet. You can't learn a health care career by reading or watching you tube!
Edward,
I believe what you have outlined here is a very effective method of instructing & teaching this generations. It allows them to discover & research in a safe environment & to bounce ideas off of one another & have shared intelligence.
Ryan Meers, Ph.D.
I teach technical material. I have found that by providing a general outline to what the topic is and letting them perform the initial work followed by open experimenting based on questions and observations yielded more information gained and a better understanding of it.
The initial outline provided a step of point for the concepts. As questions were raised during the experiment, students explored/discussed/researched them using any means at their disposal. It was interesting to me how they used new technology and how their thought process was working. I would be able to add in some of my observations to help guide them where I wanted them to go.
Overall they learned and understood more from this format.
The information in this course helped me to focus in on my observations of Gen Y and see that tthere is a little of each generation in all of us.
Mike,
yes, this generation thrives with the interactive.
Ryan Meers, Ph.D.
Generation Y learners are accustomed to education being entertaining as well as informative. They are used to being active participants while being entertained. Attending to a lecture does not meet their need to be entertained. I believe that Generation Y learners need to to learn how to function and obtain information in a variety or formats and should not expect the world to always be an entertaining arena. Sometimes, it is not! Sometimes, it is necessary to pursue knowledge on your own, through print media of one form or another, and be able to comprehend, analyze, and synthesize that information.
I am another who agrees. It is the interactive nature that has value and appeal to their style of learning
Maybe Gen Yers are more demanding of experiential learning, but I think almost all people value it and learn from it better. When I studied adult education over 20 years ago, the big thing was to involve the students in the learning process as much as possible and to make it as hands-on as possible. This was in the training realm, however. Maybe main-stream education is just now getting around to thinking the same way.
Heather,
this is very true & one of the keys is to have good reviews, after action review & debriefs to really help them make sense of what they just did.
Ryan Meers, Ph.D.
