Embracing Digital Tools of the Millennial Trade. — from virtuallyinspired.org
Excerpt:
Thus, millennials are well-acquainted with – if not highly dependent on – the digital tools they use in their personal and professional lives. Tools that empower them to connect and collaborate in a way that is immediate and efficient, interactive and self-directed. Which is why they expect technology-enhanced education to replicate this user experience in the virtual classroom. And when their expectations fall short or go unmet altogether, millennials are more likely to go in search of other alternatives.
From DSC:
There are several solid tools mentioned in this article, and I always appreciate the high-level of innovation arising from Susan Aldridge, Marci Powell, and the folks at virtuallyinspired.org.
After reading the article, the key considerations that come to my mind involve the topics of usability and advocating for the students’ perspective. That is, we need to approach things from the student’s/learner’s standpoint — from a usability and user experience standpoint. For example, a seamless/single sign-on for each of these tools would be a requirement for implementing them. Otherwise, learners would have to be constantly logging into a variety of systems and services. Not only is that process time consuming, but a learner would need to keep track of additional passwords — and who doesn’t have enough of those to keep track of these days (I realize there are tools for that, but even those tools require additional time to investigate, setup, and maintain).
So plug-ins for the various CMSs/LMSs are needed that allow for a nice plug-and-play situation here.