Future Trends

The new generation of technology-savvy students currently enrolled in and entering college possesses unprecedented IT skill levels. They think about and use technology radically differently from earlier student cohorts. As a consequence, we expected to find that such students would demand greater use of technology in teaching and learning in the classroom. They did not. What we found was a moderate preference for technology. We expected that it would be increasingly necessary for faculty to use technology in order to appeal to the attention and learning styles of this generation of students. Ironically, we found that many of the most skilled students in the use of technology had mixed feelings about technology in the classroom. We expected students to already possess good skills in using IT in support of learning. What we found was that many necessary skills had to be learned at the university, and the motivation for doing so was very much tied to the requirements of the curriculum. The students in our survey had not—outside of the classroom and prior to coming to college—gained the necessary skills to use technology in support of academic work outside the classroom. Concomitantly, we found a significant need for further training in using IT to support learning and develop problem-solving skills. Lastly, we found that both faculty and students used course management systems 6 Future Trends