How do I teach Digital Natives?

I thought of myself as a digital native but after reading Prensky 2001, I realised that I'm a mix between the old and the new. I've lived with digital content all my life, I generally prefer it to hardware content, but I do not have the social networking, nor the love of videos of the digital natives. This became very clear to me when I chose to read the article, rather than watching the videos as my first way of learning about this.

First of all, I do not believe that the students are so fundamentally different today than some 30 years ago. There are two differences that I've seen, both related to reading. The first is the reluctance to read the course literature. Many students prefer to learn by following a tutorial instead of reading the book. The second concerns a laboratory instruction that I’ve worked quite a lot on and that I believe to be quite clear. Recently, however, I’ve had many questions regarding this. At first I thought that the students had simply been too lazy to read the instruction. However, after meeting with several groups, I realised that they actually had read, but that they couldn’t take it in correctly. I think it’s sad that the literacy is decreasing as the digital literacy is increasing.

So, what can I do as a teacher to better reach these digital natives? In the classroom, I can make students more active, using problems that the students can discuss. I can use videos more but not exclusively. Students must also be able to learn through text. For my laboratory instruction I could perhaps make smaller tutorial videos. Using gamification in teaching is also a good way to increase student participation and engagement.

Prensky, Marc (2001). ”Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants”. On the Horizon, MCB University Press, Vol 9, No 5.

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