Millenials Online

Millenials Online

It began innocently enough.  I decided that I didn't enjoy being totally retired and out of the classroom completely but didn't want to do any teaching face-to-face as that pins me down too much.  I had begun my earliest experiences at the post secondary level teaching about online learning and so I thought I would be okay to end my career the way this part of it began. So I put my name into the pool and got asked if I would teach Educational Research and Statistics online. The subject material was not a favorite of mine but I am a quick study so I accepted and I was off to the races.  I noticed something wasn't quite right from the very beginning. I asked students to contact me using WhatsApp and send me text messages. I encouraged them to Skype or phone if they wanted.  I made myself available in every way possible using the technology. I believed that these students, born well after I first started to teach teachers on peer-to-peer networked desk tops, would have no trouble with the communications at all. It might have been a problem with the content but the mode of delivery I never thought would be a problem. However, it has turned out that it has been a challenge for almost all seven of them at one point or another. I don't think it is that they are not comfortable with technology. I think the problem for starters is that there are too many competing activities for them to devote to the course work to the best of their ability.  They are working either part or full time and not always in a classroom, although they all want to be teachers.  They all carry at least one part time job to pay for their earlier programs.  They all want to have their freedom from class and assume that whatever they have to do, it should not be so challenging that they cannot get it done on time or as expected. We are more than two thirds of the way through and there are four major assignments and I have one who has not finished anything at all, and only three who are now finished Assignment Three and ready to go on to Assignment Four.  I have told one already that I think  he has the making of a fine PhD dissertation in this graduate course and he has not once said thank you.  I have had to lead some of them around and almost point their noses in the right direction.  I have tried to help them get a vision of their course work but it just doesn't seem to be coming easily.  Is it me? I don't think so!  I think it is the nature of the student, used to being given everything and everything made easy and here, when they have to take up a challenge, they don't have the time or the willingness to make the effort.  This despite my encouragement to use Skype or WhatsApp or EMail or Text Messaging to contact me for help. I never would have expected students online to be so incapable of using the technology to accomplish their tasks.  How can we ever change this?