What next for Generation 4.0?

If one generation was going to be prepared for the new world of remote, it was going to be the Millennials. Or so we thought. Born and bred amongst screens and wearables, virtual environments seem to be a second skin for this 4.0 Generation. Skills honed in the world of virtual play have prepared them for the challenges of a society transformed by compulsory confinement. 

Surely, digital interaction has come into force as the new normal established by the multifarious nature of COVID in all paths of life. A landscape that is not going away anytime soon - and Universities must follow suit when societies and behaviors learn to navigate the maelstrom.

As Higher education migrates online, the challenge remains to adapt faculty to technology-led instruction. Remarkably, at Católica the change was smooth. Generation 2.0 flipped the classroom with gusto sharing best practices across social media and introducing new methodologies into their courses. We are proud to witness that even assessment is being rethought across all faculties, as faculty discovers the affordances of online examination software. For us, COVID is revealing the true nature of academia - ready to resist and forever open to deal with hazard and find solutions. This is after all what science is about.And yet, there is complexity in the picture. 

Either prompted by the unexpected and fast pace of change or by sheer confinement, Generation 4.0 students are growing anxious about the super techie academic environment. Overcoming face-to-face interaction may have once been their trademark but the move now seems to be setting off depression. Activist responses are popping up where student unions challenge the shift to online education induced by the pandemic and related implications to the overall quality of education. Other student reactions pivot around the challenges to housing on campus, forced displacement and psychological support. An additional concern lies with preparedness for new assessment models and exams. But loneliness plays a fundamental part in this equation. 

Separated from friends and family in a foreign country, students are often coming to their supervisors for human interaction. This may take the form of an increase in tutoring, Skype or Zoom meetings. They are tech-savvy like no other generation, but they are anthropologically geared towards unmediated empathy. Just as business leaders continue to believe face-to-face meetings and personal interaction are key to corporate success. Maybe, as NYTimes columnist Frank Bruni argues, “we are not wired for social distancing”. 

At a critical time for university decisions about education, governance and business models, it is important to recall technology is a driver, not an end. The defining trait that will make an institution boom or bust, is the quality of the interaction between the community of scholars and learners. This interaction may be unavoidably wired, but the wire will not just yet define the quality of interaction.

#Catolica atHome; #generation4.0; #wiringeducation;