Life-ready learning in a classroom size of 1
“Dad, when I am a grown up I want to be…”
… a remote robotic surgeon, a superstructure printer, a national identity conservationist?
Counting 72 million people worldwide, Gen Z is the largest generation entering the workforce, ever. They are the kids and young adults who are currently 7–22 years old (born 1997–2012, although precise years vary depending on source used), and the first generation fully raised with internet and cell phones. Yet, we do not know what type of jobs Gen Z will do — 54% of Gen Z expects to do a job that currently doesn’t exist (Microsoft), and 56% of new jobs are in a brand-new profession (McKinsey).
The question educators therefore ask themselves is, what skills should we teach youth to prepare them for their highly digital future. Now, is the question “how does Gen Z best learn the skills they need for their digital future?” not equally important?
Understanding how Gen Z learns, is a mission of curriculum makers who till date belong to another generation than Gen Z. Therefore one could say that there is a principle disconnect, which needs to be bridged if one is trying to understand Gen Z. Remarkably, the generation right before Gen Z, the millennials, are not necessarily the generation that show most resemblance with Gen Z. FutureCast President Jeff Fromm, expert in marketing to Gen Z, says Gen Z’s values are more strongly aligned with their baby boomers counterparts than those of the generation that came directly before them, the millennials (contentmarketinginstitute.com).
More than millennials, Gen Z is looking for purpose. Jeff Fromm characterized this demographic group as “old souls in young bodies”. While they are digital, social, and mobile to the core, he says, they have strong values. They truly care and they want to make a positive difference in the world (wgu.edu).
Further, Gen Z is profoundly social. Their usage of social networks like Instagram, YouTube, and Twitch being very high, social status and community mean a lot to them. They are therefore more likely to seek content opportunities endorsed by their idols and peers. To illustrate: just 24 hours after Taylor Swift urged her 112 million-strong Instagram fan base to vote for Democrats in the midterm elections of 2018, the non-partisan Vote.org registered 65,000 new voters.
In this podcast, Mark Sparvell, Education Leader at Microsoft, shares insight of a study conducted between Microsoft Education and McKinsey & Company, called “Class of 2030”. The study focuses on how society and the world of work are changing and how education is adapting. For this study, interviews were conducted with 4000 students and teachers, thought leaders including venture capitalists and academics, alongside literature research.
Now apart from this study’s useful insights in life beyond schooling — 30% of employers and 55% of students of computer science say they’re not ready for working life because they lack social-emotional skills such as self-regulation — to learn more about how Gen Z learns, I’d like to highlight this study’s findings on the aspirations and expectations of Gen Z as they approach schooling.
Mark Sparvell explains that Gen Z is looking for 3 things in a learning experience. Ideally, every learning experience should be:
- Personalised
- Contextualised
- Relevant
Mark Sparvell says student-centred approaches to learning are critical: the kind of approaches that take an asset-focus: to look at the knowledge and skills that the learner brings, and connect it to purpose and passion. Purpose and passion increase a person’s subjective well-being — in other words, this is what makes them happy, he says.
How to design learning experiences that are appealing for Gen Z? For educators who are tasked with designing learning experiences, the Microsoft/McKinsey study shares few more insights:
- Focus learning experiences on the student and build on the knowledge and skills the learner already has
- Provide learning opportunities that are authentic and purposeful, students need to be able to make connections with their learning experiences
- Design learning experiences to be social by nature. This also helps learners to master those fundamentally important social emotional skills, such as self-awareness, relationship building, and negotiation skills
- Allow autonomy in learning, i.e. provide students the ability to control and navigate their own learning — the right content at the right time delivered at the right pace.
- Use technology to support Gen Z specific approaches to learning, such as:
- To scale social connections with other learners and experts globally through collaborative platforms
- To make learning autonomous through use of AI and advanced analytics
- To create immersive learning though mixed reality experiences
Besides attracting Gen Z to learning, if educators succeed to create such learning experiences, also there will be greater alignment between the changing world of work and higher education; graduates will be more “ready from day 1” than currently is the case.
Autonomous, personalised learning that is perceived relevant and purposeful seems to be the approach to learning that resonates best with Gen Z. The classroom size shrinking to 1, the classroom itself becoming wall-less.
