How we should encourage cheating youngsters

Young people are doing lots of things wrong, or seem to indulge in socially unacceptable behavior, such as griefing - read on this site The Devil's Advocate by AJ Tan and the response by Prokofy Neva on Second Thoughts Why The Kids Aren't Alright.

I'll tell you another story about deviant behavior by young people, and also why that behavior, while in itself is not recommendable, can also give us reasons to be less negative about the new generation. However, educators, institutions and companies will have to adapt and we will have to help those young people.

So, how can the new generation at the same time display behavior that is very promising for business and the economy but at the same time drives teachers and older folks mad?

Teenagers cheat at school. They always did, they still do, will always do, and technology is helping them. They use electronic networks such as Facebook to get together and to distribute the homework. Those who like mathematics provide that part of the job, those who like to write deliver texts which are carefully “customized”. In other words, they make their teachers and professors rather angry, but they do engage in what could be called “collaborative co-creation” using the internet-tools at their disposal. They learn how to optimize networks and discover that by doing so they get things being done. At the same time, they challenge the underpinnings of education like it is organized now, so Professor Tony O’Driscoll, Duke University, told at the recent vBusiness Expo Conference.

Today’s students are born between 1982 and 2002, a group of people called the Millennial Generation, to be contrasted with the Generation X, which typically includes people born between 1964 and 1982.

I remember vividly a Metanomics show in January this year, featuring the Serious Games Institute, associated with Conventry University in the UK. David Wortley is the director of this Institute, and his take on the Millennials: those people are “almost another species”.

The old methods of hierarchical learning where experts transfer their knowledge and students just absorb that knowledge are not suited for that generation, so Wortley explained. The technology we have now, and particularly web2.0, makes it possible to learn in a much more collaborative way, based on peer-to-peer interaction and where the teacher is not a fountain of knowledge but a knowledge facilitator, guiding others through the learning process.

Companies and institutions seem to realize that a new generation announces itself. The US Air Force, having to recruit the finest and the bravest, is one such very interested institution to learn everything there is to know about today's youngsters.

The findings of their research are such that the US Air Force wants to revamp its education practices between 2008 en 2030 and at the core of the new system would be MyBase, a virtual education system. The issues are well explained and documented in a White Paper.

So are these Millennials the perfect flexible, collaborative inspired people who will transform society and the economy, and who will stream into virtual worlds such as Second Life as soon as some virtual evangelists make them discover those virtual environments?

Not so fast. I have been reading a very insightful post by Feldspar Epstein in The Metaverse Journal with the appropriate title Students vs. Second Life.

Epstein explains:

In Second Life, the gap between Generation X and the Millennial Generation comes sharply into focus (...):

1. Second Life is primarily filled with Generation X’ers, unintentionally creating a socially unwelcoming environment for Millennials;

2. Generation X’ers know how to play in the freeform manner that Second Life requires, whereas Millennials typically do not display that skill.

Second Life is not a game environment with precise goals. It is an open ended environment with many different groups and individuals. This freedom and creativity is embraced by Generation X. "The Millennial Generation, however, needs now to be taught to play this way. They need to be drawn out of their risk-averse shells gently – they need to be led, not pushed. They are not bold", so Epstein says. Another nice quote: "a Millennial is more likely to play Guitar Hero than to spend time noodling about with a guitar."

Something which is very important for the Millennials is spending time with friends. Study and work are often experienced as boring and distressing, and it is very important to them to restrict the place of study and work in their lives, so as protect the time they want to share with their friends and loved ones.

Epstein explains:

Millennials are much more likely to have many friends with whom they communicate face to face and then organize those friends and their own lives using technological gadgets and the Internet, rather than meeting people over the Internet.

Facebook, IM and texting are so popular because they help the Millennials to stay permanently connected with their friends, friends they know already in real life.

My take on this: we can learn from the Millennials but we also have an obligation to help them.

Learn from them because they could very well be masters of collaboration, developing collaborative ways of living in order to reduce workload and to enhance experiences that do matter, like friendship or solidarity. They are, in a rather indirect way, questioning the way education is formally organized.

Help them to discover the creativity of what Epstein calls freeform play, open-ended play. They will need this creativity in a world where it is easier to become an individual enterpreneur rather than an employee functioning in a big corporate machine.

Second Life should develop the social tools of the virtual world even more, becoming more like a 3D-Facebook. As far as the educators are concerned, I hope we find ways to promote the freeform play, without being perceived as overzealous and meddling parents and teachers.