Digital Natives or Nah

This week's readings brought up two interesting concepts - that of digital natives vs digital immigrants. In his article, Prensky first moots the notion of today's ineffective education system being due to older generation of educators ("Digital Immigrants") being unable to fully grasp the changes in today's learners (Digital Natives). Digital Immigrants, Prensky argues, are too caught up in enacting traditional methods of teaching, a style wholly incompatible with today's learners. Now, do I really buy into this argument? From my own experience, I recognize that the nature of our learners are, in fact changing - in both the speed and volume of information that they have come to expect to receive. However, is simply switching to a more "technologically-driven" style or a more "gamified approach" that panders to these Digital Natives necessarily the answer as Prensky has suggested? I would think not.

Case in Point #1: When I was in the military training institute, I was lucky enough to partake in a Curriculum Transformation Exercise, where we sought to harness the use of technology and new approaches (such as Self-Directed Learning) in teaching our trainees the necessary content knowledge, skills and concepts. The idea, similar to Prensky's, was in leveraging on the trainees' strengths (such as in technology) to improve their learning experience. However, even given the benefit of technology and the freedom to find out more about the relevant concepts at hand, we found out that the trainees (i) did not know what they were looking for and subsequently lost interest, (ii) developed different understandings of the main topic and perhaps most frighteningly, did not raise any questions as (iii) they did not know what they did not know (assumed they had the complete picture). The technology provided provided them with a wealth of information, but they simply did not know where to look, and when they did, they assumed that whatever they read could be taken as the gospel truth. Learning point: We cannot simply take technology as the panacea to today's educational issues. It can complement, but not yet replace traditional methods of teaching.

Case in Point #2: As I was reading through Prensky's article, I though "Hmmm... This is interesting". In my previous semester, I did some research on the effectiveness of Gamification on learner performance and learner motivation as my group project in EDF5442. The results, to say the least, were quite interesting. First, I have to caveat that this "research" only took place in the context of the class project and we were limited to quite a small sample, as well as collection of data through surveys and interviews. However, results demonstrated that while Gamification of the learning environment did in fact, lead to greater levels of engagement (Behavioral, Cognitive and Emotional), there was no empirical data to show that learner performance improved due to the gamification strategy. Furthermore, respondents also expressed their belief that this increase in engagement levels could be due to the fact that the gamification strategy was something new and fresh to the learners - something that would erode its appeal over time. I also have concerns over Prensky's suggestions to make education (or edutainment) fast and quick (cutting down 10 minutes of content to under 30 seconds). While I understand this as a move to capture the learner's attention, as well as removing as many unnecessary information as possible, I feel that there can be no short cuts to education. If 10 minutes is needed to properly teach a content, then it should take 10 minutes. Cutting down the content simply to pander to the attention span of the learners will only result in diluting their experience. Learning point: Effective Instructional Design should consider the most efficient, but more importantly, the most effective way to impart knowledge. 

So... Digital Natives or nah? I think that there is a need to design our curriculum and instruction in a way that best caters to way our learners absorb and more importantly, retain the knowledge that they have gained throughout their learning journey. The changing characteristics of our learners are also an undeniable fact. However, to label someone as a "Digital Native" or "Digital Immigrant" seems to be overly simplistic, and do not consider the many other important facets in designing instruction (such as demographics, level of experience etc.) For me, it has got to be a NAH.