Richard Nantel

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of attending my colleague Janet Clarey‘s Webinar on Multi-Generational Learning in the Workplace. To illustrate the educational experiences of a person born on the cusp of the Generation X and Baby Boomer generations, Janet asked me to say a few words during her presentation about my formal education. Reflecting back on my grade school years, I realized that my time at school differed significantly from the education currently provided to my 10- and 15-year-old daughters.

Classrooms in the 1960s and 70s had desks lined up in rows facing the teacher and the blackboard. Group projects were practically non-existent. One of the only times you collaborated on a project might be to perform a dissection in biology class. (Clearly, the high cost of dead preserved frogs was the main impetus to having students team up in biology. Had dead frogs been cheaper, we would have performed our biology experiments as we did all of our other school work: alone.)

Contrast this to the modern K12 classroom. Desks in my youngest daughter’s classroom are arranged in groups of four, kitchen table style. Students work facing each other, not the teacher. Every day, students spend time on group projects. On the first day of each month, my daughter comes home from school and announces the members of her new group. If she’s lucky, she’ll have one of her best friends seated with her. If she’s unlucky, she’ll have the kid who likes to watch horror movies and provide detailed summaries.

Whereas students today spend their days working in groups, they don’t spend as much time after school with friends as my generation did. When my daughters’ school days end, they attend organized activities such as dance classes or figure skating practices, or they spend time relaxing at home. They might connect with friends after school through Facebook or text messaging, but, in my neighborhood, playing with friends after school is a rarity.

When I was their age, all time outside of school hours was spent outdoors with friends. If any of us were home after school, it was likely due to illness or, more likely, detention.

I’ve always assumed that most children today don’t roam free with their friends after school because of the influence of overprotective parents who have watched too many news reports of abductions. But, perhaps this isn’t the case. Maybe kids shun friends after school because they need downtime from an educational system based largely on group learning. Perhaps they’re just sick of people by the end of the day.

Alternately, kept separated in rows and working alone on our studies in the 1960s and 70s, perhaps my generation was hungry for human contact. The ringing of the end-of-day school bell at last signaled our freedom to satisfy social needs. Days filled with individual learning created nights playing kick-the-can and stargazing with friends.

The amount of group and individual learning we experienced may influence how we like to learn. Janet mentioned in her presentation that Anoush Margaryan, a lecturer at the Caledonian Academy, Glasgow Caledonian University in the UK (who was in attendance for yesterday’s Webinar), has found that students’ attitudes to learning appear to be influenced by the approach adopted by their lecturers.

Ms. Margaryan’s findings suggest that the next generation of workers may expect employee training to take place in groups. Individual learning may be seen as unusual and socially isolating. The use of learning technologies that enable connections with others may appear more natural to these workers than self-paced online courses they undertake alone.