Well, I always announce when Innovate has articles or webcasts dealing with virtual schooling, K-12 online learning or distance eductaion, and generational differences. So, when the announcement showed up in my inbox yesterday, I noticed that there were two items dealing with generational differences there.
Innovate ( www.innovateonline.info) is published bimonthly as a public service by the Fischler School of Education and Human Services at Nova Southeastern University and is sponsored, in part, by Microsoft. The articles in the August/September 2008 issue initially focus on the tensions and opportunities inherent in the cognitive and cultural differences between instructors and their Net Generation students and closes with discussions of two online resources for science education, one a collection of lessons and pedagogical resources for educators and the other a virtual world in which learners pursue informal science learning.
Innovate-Live webcasts, produced by our partner, ULiveandLearn, allow you to synchronously interact with authors on the topics of their articles.
You may register for the August/September webcasts at http://www.uliveandlearn.com/PortalInnovate/. Webcasts will be archived and available in the webcast section of the article and in the Innovate-Live portal archive shortly after the webcast. All times are Eastern Time (New York). You may use the world clock at http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/ to coordinate with your time zone.
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Our next two articles focus on the differences between Net-Generation students and their sometimes bewildered instructors. Mark Mabrito and Rebecca Medley argue that the blogs, social networking sites, and other interactive venues favored by these students reflect cognitive differences wrought by a lifetime of technological immersion and suggest that instructors can benefit by learning to read these electronic texts, which must be understood differently than the paper texts of previous generations, and by leveraging them as pedagogical opportunities. [See http://www.innovateonline.info/index.php?view=article&id=510&action=article ]. Their webcast is scheduled for September 11, 2008 at 2:00 PM ET.
Valerie Milliron and Kent Sandoe focus on a more troubling difference: the apparent indifference of Net Generation students toward cheating. Detailing their own experience with a pattern of cheating on online quizzes, Milliron and Sandoe describe the Net Generation’s “culture of cheating” and describe ways to detect or, even better, deter cheating. [See http://www.innovateonline.info/index.php?view=article&id=499&action=article ] Their webcast is scheduled for September 17, 2008 at 11:00 AM ET.
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We hope that you enjoy this issue of Innovate. Please use the discussion board within each article to raise questions or provide additional commentary. Your comments will be sent to authors for their response, which will become part of the record for their article. Also, please ask your organizational librarian to include Innovate in their section for open-access journals.
If you are considering submitting a manuscript describing how you use Microsoft technology to enhance the higher education experience for publication consideration in the From our Sponsors section, please make sure that it conforms to the publication guidelines described at the Contribute link on Innovate’s navigation bar. The senior authors of the top three papers published prior to June, 2009 will be invited to present their paper at the Microsoft Global Exchange summit in July 2009 (with expenses covered by Microsoft).
Thanks!
Jim
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James L Morrison
Editor-in-Chief, Innovate
http://www.innovateonline.info
Fischler School of Education and Human Services
Nova Southeastern University
http://www.schoolofed.nova.edu/home.htm
If anyone does attend, please ask them about their research to indicated that today’s students are truly different than students of previous generations based on their exposure to digital technology - as I’ve yet to see any systematic, reliable and valid research that comes to that conclusion.
