The Future of Teaching & Learning in Higher Education

A one-day conference
Friday, February 7, 2007
Keynote presentation by Marilee Jones - watch video (Real Player)

Thanks to a gift by a recent Tufts alumni, on Friday, February 2nd the Experimental College hosted a one-day educational conference entitled “Educating the Ne(x)t Generation.” The aim of the conference was to bring together faculty members and administrators from various New England Colleges to explore the impact that young people who have grown up in a multitasking, multimedia environment will have on the future of teaching and learning in higher education. The event took place in the Coolidge Room where close to 100 educators from sixteen different schools gathered to participate in the day long event.

The keynote talk given by Marilee Jones, the Dean of Admissions at M.I.T., titled “Avoiding the Generation Gap: Understanding the ‘Millennials,” defined the four most prevalent generations in America today.  Jones mainly concentrated on the millennial generation, made up of those individuals born post 1979 whom she described as anxious, sleep deprived, constantly busy, and continuously under academic and social pressures, a profile of the ne(x)t generation which served as a useful platform for the remainder of the conference.

Dean Jones was followed by Tufts’ Provost and Senior Vice President , Jamshed Bharucha, who spoke about cognitive and neurological implications of being continually “connected.” He proposed that this new generation’s brains might function differently than previous generations; and therefore might yield different types of learning styles. He particularly spoke about this point in terms of memory and the generation’s lack of long-term memory retention. Bharucha stressed that today’s educators must take into account the altered brain functions of these “wired” students before they can successfully teach to this generation.

The morning continued with a presentation by Robert Jacob (Computer Science) and Angela Paradise from the Department of Communications at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, both of whom explored the implications for computer technology as the Ne(x)t Gens go forward. The afternoon was dedicated to examining innovative teaching models. Kent Portney (Political Science) presented the use of multimedia simulations. Marina Bers (Child Development) talked about her involvement in designing virtual communities. Roger Tobin (Physics) spoke about using Tufts Classroom Response System. And Barbara Ganley from the Writing Program and English Department at Middlebury College talked about how such new media as digital storytelling and blogging can be used as vehicles for positive academic discourse and community learning.

The conference ended by asking each table to determine how Hurricane Katrina could be taught using the new technologies introduced by panel members and their own interdisciplinary experiences. Overall the conference was an enormous success, and the Ex College received nothing but positive feedback from participants.