As technology is integrated into contemporary society, higher education must balance the expectations of a new generation of technology-students with the perspectives of an older generation of faculty. Often referred to as the Net Generation or Millennial, today’s students have grown up in a rich digital environment where technology is both transparent and ubiquitous. Technology has always been part of their lives, from the Internet to laptops, iPods, games, instant messaging (IM), cell phones, and pagers. They take technology for granted—they expect it to be integral to their lives and to serve them, including in education.

Faculty are in a complex position: they must engage students, maintain their own technology skills, and work within potentially change-resistant professional practices and institutional structures. As students themselves, most faculty experienced a learning environment characterized by face-to-face contact, print-based media, and limited interaction.

The differences in generational perspectives are striking. Student reliance on the immediacy of IM promotes a different sense of time and availability than faculties. The Net Gen’s participation in collaborative social projects—online gaming environments, wikis, and blogs places the focus on participation rather than credentials, invoking the “wisdom of the crowd.” Faculty self-identification with a specific academic discipline contrasts with students’ interdisciplinary collaboration. Academic technologists who serve faculty and students are thus caught between competing frameworks and expectations.

Instructional technologists work with many faculties who are willing to risk change and are interested in transforming the learning environment through new communication and collaboration modalities. To create a successful partnership between faculty, students, and academic technologists requires understanding how each group contributes to the learning process. The Net Gen will increasingly expect faculty to effectively integrate technology into the learning environment for them, collaboration is a reality, not an ideal. Faculty must leverage technology and frequently reassess their role in the learning process. Academic technologists must work with both students and faculty as higher education transforms our access to information, our understanding of community, and our sense of personal space and relationships. In serving the new generation of students, academic technologists should consider:

• To what degree should the institution accommodate the new generation of students (versus teaching them additional learning strategies)?
• What type of support will the next generation of faculty expect?
• What are the most effective strategies for keeping academic technologists up-to-date with incoming students?

By: Danilo B. Gomez | T-II | Orani National High School Tugatog, Orani, Bataan