Examining Millennial Characterizations as Guidance for Choosing Classroom Strategy Changes
International Journal for the Scholarship of
Millennial Characterizations as Guidance for Choosing Classroom Strateg y
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Examining
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Examining Millennial Characterizations as Guidance for Choosing Classroom Strategy Changes
Tracy Russo University
of Kansas Lawrence,
Kansas, USA
Abstract
This project reports exploration of the expectations of the students in my large public
Midwestern university about learning processes and their teachers. Its objective was to
help ground my own reflections on whether and how the pedagogical changes proposed to
accommodate the Millennial generation are appropriate for my students and for me. Data
were gathered through a survey (n = 204) based on the literature and specifically focusing
on claims made about the Millennial generational group. I then sought to identify additional
issues and to hear the students’ own reflections on teaching and learning through three
focus groups. Results indicated that some student responses to items reflecting generational
characterizations were consistent with stereotypical claims, but some were not. This paper
then presents my reflection about how results inform how I might proceed as I seek to
support learning in my students.
Introduction
Inundated by stories in the popular and academic press about the learning needs of
contemporary college students, many student-centered instructors are working to change
their teaching strategies and methods. They are responding to arguments that the
characteristics of Millennial students are different enough from previous generations that
successfully teaching them requires revising pedagogies and tools: extensive use of digital
technology, team learning, short blocks of information presentation, integrated games,
music and video, and very specific, step-by-step instructions for assignments. This urgency
for change is heightened by pressures on higher education. Colleges and universities must
respond to reduced funding, criticisms about rising costs and claims of poor
costeffectiveness, a shift of emphasis from arts and humanities to science and technology,
increased anti-intellectualism, and questions about the value and mission of higher
education. Students, and their parents, increasingly are characterized as consumers who
have the right to define what their educations should be like and that they want technology
and other changed practices in the classroom. The result for many faculty members is
pressure to use every possible new tool to meet these conditions.
While I find many of the arguments about this generation of college students compelling
and consistent with my own experience, I have struggled with how I should respond. How
can I select tactics that are consistent with my teaching and learning philosophy, with my
subject material, and, importantly, with the needs of my own students? How much time
and energy should I commit to changing my teaching tactics? Changes, however
appropriate, must inevitably take time away from my other professorial responsibilities,
and the pressures there have increased, not abated, in response to the challenges my own
university faces.
To help me formulate my own response, then, I sought to better understand my own
students. This project sought to explore the expectations of students in my large public
Midwestern university about learning processes and about their teachers. I began with a
survey based on the literature and specifically focusing on claims made about the Millennial
generational group. Then, to identify additional issues and to hear the students’ own
reflections on teaching and learning, I conducted three focus groups. This paper reports on
that project and then reflects about what it tells me and how I might proceed as I seek to
support learning in my students.
Literature Review
Millennial Students
Most articles in the press group the 15.6 million undergraduate students in college
(U.S.
Department of Education, 2007)
with members of the Millennial generation. The term
Millennial has come to describe individuals born between about 1982 and 2000
(Hoover,
2009; Howe & Strauss, 2000)
, although the dates vary. Smola and Sutton (2002), for
example, set the dates as 1979 and 1994. Although this group represents some 80 million
individuals (with that number growing due to immigration)
(Coomies, 2004)
, many authors
treat the group as a single homogeneous entity. Neil Howe and William Strauss in 2000
assigned seven “core traits” to the group. Millennials are, Howe and Strauss argued,
special, sheltered, confident, team-oriented, conventional, pressured and achieving. This
argument clearly caught the imagination of marketers, teachers and administrators in
higher education, and authors in the popular press
(e.g. Pew, 2007; Gaudelli, 2009;
Rampell, 2011; Samuelson, 2010)
, the popular literature
(e.g. Alsop, 2008; Strauss &
Howe, 2007; Tapscott, 2009; Twenge, 2006; Winograd & Hais, 2011)
and empirical (...truncated)