Reflect 2

I will like to reflect on   DO GENERATIONAL DIFFERENCES MATTER IN INSTRUCTIONAL DESIGN?*

Firstly, I must accept that my poor English “kill” a lot of my time and energy to understand the such terrible long essay.

In the part of GENERATIONAL DIFFERENCES ACROSS GENDER, RACE, & SES (socioeconomic status). I will like to highlight that:

1)      Sayer, Folbre, and Matheson (2003), found that as women’s income approached that of their male spouses, there was more likely to be an equitable sharing of housework within families. They also found, however, that where traditional income relationships persisted (men making more money than women), women tended to do a larger share of the household jobs.

2)      Shelton and Shelton (2005) concluded that a significant number of Generation X women were leaving the workforce or lowering their expectations for career advancement in light of the barriers they perceived.

3)      The same survey found that positive relationships with colleagues, interesting work, and continuous opportunities for learning were listed as the top three workplace attractors for Generation X women whereas recognition, power and prestige, and salary were ranked near the bottom (Fisher, 2006).

4)      Loo and Thorpe (1998) also found that Gen Xers were much more liberal about gender roles than Baby Boomers.

There are something different happen from time to time. I will like to see that egalitarianism between man and women toward a bright future. Even the process is slow, but better than less compare with the past. This phenomena may because of the women  awake to their right play the important role. The world can’t deny that women play the important part and contributed a lot to the society and the world, whereas quick spreading of information also help to speedup it.

In the statement of :

1)      There is an ongoing debate between those who believe that the Net Gen is fundamentally different from previous generations in ways that require new approaches to teaching and learning and those who believe that how people learn is not fundamentally affected by generational membership. Prensky (2001a)

2)      It is also clear that members of the Net Gen spend more time playing games than Gen Xers and that Gen Xers in turn play more than Baby Boomers (Rideout, Roberts & Foehr, 2005).

There are the reasons we need to take it seriously to look into our T&L. There was a challenge to the teachers to open their mind, to accept the different way how the new generation study. Teacher can’t stick on their old fashion chalk and talk teaching style, most of the students need a leading than a lecturing.  

I will like to discuss a little bit about DIFFERENTIAL EFFICACY OF INSTRUCTIONAL DESIGN

1)      The scholarly debate among educational researchers and learning theorists about the relative merit of behaviorism, cognitivism, constructivism, and social constructivism continues. Indeed, some argue that this debate is devolving into ideological stances rather than carefully examined theoretical models (Kirschner, Sweller, & Clark, 2006).

2)      “Meanwhile, in the real world of business and industrial training, practitioners are likely to change their instructional approaches based primarily on the promotion of the latest and greatest training technologies touted to “revolutionize” training rather than on the basis of dubious learning theory or weak research findings. At the same time, Generation “experts” are making big bucks as consultants who issue recommendations that are also uninformed by strong theory or the findings of sound research.”

3)      Chester (2002) offers the following five basic principles for training the Net Generation without any reference to principles of learning theory or findings from educational research studies:

• Make it fun

• Engage them

• Make it fresh

• Keep up the pace

• Reward skill development

From above statements. Clearly, the teachers need to renew their skill of instructional design in teaching. The world changed, the mind must change! Today’s teachers are more easier to collect the teaching information than the past, but at same time, students are also expose to a lot of new information. That’s why teachers need to have progress in  instructional design to help the students to learn in a comfort condition.     

I like to describe about the DIFFERENTIAL EFFICACY OF EDUCATIONAL TECHNOLOGIES.

1)      Wendover (2002) define as the new generation learners (millennials). These students, born after 1980, have grown up with what other generations view as new technologies. They are connected (mostly to each other) and proficient in the use of communicative technology, often viewing what transpires in college classrooms as slow-moving and uninteresting.

2)      students in well-designed and well-implemented online courses learned significantly more, and more effectively, than those in online courses where teaching and learning activities were not carefully planned and where the delivery and accessibility were impeded by technology problems.

 From the statement, I am agree that communicative technology are fast spread into our Malaysian society.  Today, most of the family have their computer system and also with the broadband system, our student can easily find the information about the knowledge they are going to learn. They may better than some teacher like me, they are quick to use the communicative technology than me. Some time I am also need  to ask them questions and help. Because of online activities hidden with some dangers, we as a teacher need to learn the technology by now because we need to protect the student and also to guide them to choose and use the communicative technology carefully and safely.