אין לאף אחד מונופול על ההתנגדות לשינוי

No, no, no, no, no. No.

I am willing to accept the idea that the young generation is used to a different way of interacting with information and with each other and that this may have an impact on what they expect from university. But to claim that their minds work differently? Jeez, Louise!

I remember several years ago, when I was assistant professor at Acadia University, I decided that students could be responsible, so I chose to be flexible about assignment deadlines. Sure, students could still give me their homeworks every week, but they could also rearrange their schedule. Well… I got crap over it… from the students. I am still flexible over the assignments, and I still get unusual drop-out rates. I no longer get bad reviews for it because I no longer tell my students that I am flexible.

They don’t want to have to “interact”, they want to be told what to do. Of course, it is not entirely the result of how they were educated, because it is just plain harder to take charge of your life… but I don’t think Tapscott realizes how our current system relies strongly on student expectations. It is not University management that is resisting to changes… students are just plain not asking for changes. Students want the country-club-like campus with old-school lectures. Even if it is useless, even if it is boring.

Have you ever noticed how “Star Trek Academy” is depicted? Exactly like any current-day school. Zero progress. In the recent Star Trek movie, you even have the large lecture hall.

If you have the technology to fly to the stars, why would you cram 500 students in a classroom for a lecture?

Progress will start happening when scifi movies represent schools differently.

But wait… as a professor, why would I care about how my students do on a 3-hour exam? Does it measure what I care about? Jon Dron said it best: ”So, I have been thinking about what exams taught me:(…) that the most important things in life generally take around three hours to complete.”

We need novelists, NASA engineers, and researchers. People who can work for days, weeks, months, on the same project. What I want from my students is an ability to sit down for hours and days, and work out difficult problems. I see no evidence that training specifically for exams is the right type of training.