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S - What learner characteristics do 21st century learners possess? How do these characteristics place unique demands on institutes of learning, K- 12, higher education and in the workplace?

Without pursuing change in K-12 schools, the education system will be in jeopardy of disengaging increasing numbers of students and, in turn, teachers. The structure and mandate of K-12 has not evolved dramatically since its inception. Classrooms throughout the westernized world look largely the same as they did at the turn of the 20th century - rows of desks facing the front of the classroom with the conspicuous placement of the chalkboard and teacher’s desk. While K-12 educators have made concerted efforts to modernize the delivery of curriculum and alter traditional structures, on close observation, the dynamic inside the classroom is relatively unchanged with much learning occurring by way of the transmission method. In spite of the rows of desks being reconfigured into circles or horseshoes; chalkboards being replaced with whiteboards, or even smartboards; and teachers working to create student-centered learning experiences, the model is still reflective of the act of filling empty vessels with information. Brown and Adler (2008) found, In the twentieth century, the dominant approach to education focused on helping students to build stocks of knowledge and cognitive skills that could be deployed later in appropriate situations. This approach to education worked well in a relatively stable, slowly changing world in which careers typically lasted a lifetime. But the twenty-first century is quite different. The world is evolving at an increasing pace. When jobs change, as they are likely to do, we can no longer expect to send someone back to school to be retrained. By the time that happens, the domain of inquiry is likely to have morphed yet again. At the moment, teachers point to the annoying devices, which compete for students’ attention, as the reason for lack of motivation or disengagement that they contend with while working harder at educating their charges. Technology, by and large, is viewed as an obstacle to learning. Many teachers assume that all high school students are more adept at accessing and manipulating technology and the adults in the mix don’t stand a chance of catching up. Teachers are ill-informed and unfamiliar with the incredible number of digital tools that could be used to harness the ‘annoying devices’ and engage students in interactive, inquiry based learning which will, in all likelihood, lead to greater motivation to learn and require educators to readjust perspectives on the education process. If the context of a learning experience is to be considered, educators must include technology as a necessary and viable option to support learning tasks. Karl Fisch, the Director of Technology at Arapahoe High School in Colorado states, “If a teacher today is not technologically literate - and is unwilling to make the effort to learn more - it's equivalent to a teacher 30 years ago who didn't know how to read and write”(2007). Having accepted that real collaboration and meaningful involvement amongst students may require a different approach, and realizing the requirement to expose students to 21st century technologies, educators can only turn to the read/write web. Will Richardson (2006) sees the read/write web as a, … seamless transfer of information; of collaborative, individualized learning; and of active participation by all members of class. It is marked by the continuous process of creating and sharing content with wide audiences. In many ways, these technologies are demanding that we reexamine the way we think about content and curriculum, and they are nurturing new, important shifts in how to best teach students (p.127). The context of the K-12 system must be clearly understood in order to identify the hurdles that must be acknowledged if a change process is to be undertaken. At the core of this challenge is the irony of the role of educators. While teachers and administrators make a daily commitment to advancing the importance of learning for their students, there is little to no emphasis placed on the importance of the educators’ need to learn. The educators are so busy prepping and planning for the education of others that they do not realize that their own learning has been sidelined. The kind of learning that is transformative, not the acquisition of new strategies for curriculum delivery. The emphasis must be shifted to a deeply collaborative and reflective process. A lack of time and money are often blamed for the scarcity of learning opportunities for teachers. Astute program planning can flesh out this erroneous notion and technology can mediate the transformative learning. Kasworm and Londoner contend that, “this learning must also provide opportunities for the learner to seek out and be more proactive in identifying and pursuing their specific learning needs. The learner needs to create part of the learning design and process” (2000, p. 235).

 I'm still wondering if 21st learners have different characteristics than 20th century learners? I do realize that today we have at our disposal the Internet, digital libraries, and collaborative tools but has this changed the learning process or characteristics of a learner?

We have all taken an Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) to discover our personality traits and discussed the cycles in learning presented by Kolb, Mackeracher, and Tyler. From this we can deduce that learning is natural process and that each learner will have their personal learning style. However what does the 21st century introduce to this learning process or change in the learner that places demands on facilitators, instructors, teachers, and professors? Could it be simply that learners want instant results - that microwave or video game mentality - and lack patience? Is it that learners are more apt to challenge as they can find information easily that supports their challenge?

I know in my classroom often a student will look up on their workstation the topic on I am speaking about and then ask me a question based on this lookup. I also have noticed a trait in many younger students where when having difficulty with a problem they will give up easily and demand that I solve their problem so they can continue on. This I think is a characteristic of our affluent society and the instant satisfaction they are accustomed to from the media and electronic games at their disposal.  //** Hagel, Brown and Davison (2009) ask, "What happens, for instance, as you add more participants to a carefully-designed environment? The online role-playing game [|World of Warcraft (WoW)]provides an intriguing example. More than 11.5 million people around the world now play World of Warcraft. Performance in the game is measured by experience points, which are awarded to players as they successfully address progressively more difficult challenges. It takes roughly 150 hours of accumulated game play to earn the first 2 million experience points but players on average are able to earn another 8 million experience points in the next 150 hours of accumulated game play. Even though, within the game, experience points become more difficult to acquire as you advance, World of Warcraft players are improving their performance four times faster as they continue to play the game. How? Most improve their performance by leveraging a broad set of discussion forums, wikis, databases, and instructional videos that exist outside the game. Here the players share experiences, tell stories, celebrate (and analyze) prodigious in-game achievements, and explore innovative approaches to addressing the challenges at hand. This "knowledge economy" is impressively wide and deep: in the US alone, the official forums hosted by Blizzard Entertainment contain tens of millions of postings in hundreds of forums. And those are just the forums hosted by Blizzard. Independent forums are proliferating at an even faster rate. Here's what interesting: The more players participate and interact with WoW's knowledge economy, the more valuable its resources become, and the faster players increase their rate of performance improvement. Said more generally, **the more participants--and interactions between those participants--you add to a carefully designed and nurtured environment, the more the rate of performance improvement goes up.** Think about this for a minute. If what we're seeing in World of Warcraft--as well as in [|SAP's Software Developer Network]and the world of big wave surfing, among other places--is indicative of something broader, then we're seeing the emergence of a new kind of learning curve as we scale connectivity and [|learning through pull], rather than scaling efficiency through push. We call it the "collaboration curve."
 * //Randy, check this out:

RJ - My sons play Warcraft along with Halo, Gears of War, Call of Duty ... Yes indeed they do use forums and blogs to discover "cheats", to improve their skill, change and enhance the environment of the game. Also they will form a group of peers that regularly get together on-line to challenge another group as a social activity. On a Friday evening I might have 4 -6 teenagers involved in an on-line game (or two) in the family room. Apparently as a group each member has increased performance and they learn from one another. I'll be honest and state that my skill level on any of these games is dismal and the speed at which these teenagers move around in the game is incredible.

It brings me to ponder the question of what demands the 21st century learners place on institutions and the workplace:
 * 1) learners today have a vast storage of information and facts at their fingertips but do require guidance in accessing and filtering the information
 * 2) learners today use technology both for the convenience of socializing and for gathering information (preferably simultaneously)
 * 3) learners expect current technology to be used in the learning environment

When I am teaching I am constantly reminded of these learner demands. During my class last Saturday the students all first login to their e-mail, instant messenger, and open up a web browser. If the Internet is not available there is complaints and dissatisfaction. Why would this be? They have paid considerable monies to attend the course, to have a face-to-face instructor, and their expectations are high; yet they are not willing to give up the social, side entertainment that the Internet provides. I start off with a discussion of the anticipated days activities and then lecture. The topic I am lecturing on is often googled by the students and they will ask questions based on this googled information. I find that this is useful but I also need to filter and direct their searches. If I ever demo any software the students all want the software provided to them - free - and are not satisfied with the idea that software cost money. If the equipment I'm using in the lab is not capable of running the latest features in a software package or if the equipment has some technical issues student satisfaction is reduced.