Document Type : Original Research Paper
Authors
1 Department of educational sciences, Farhangian university, P.O. Box 14665-889, Tehran. Iran
2 Associate professor, educational technology department, faculty of psychology and education, Allameh Tabataba'i University, Tehran, Iran
3 Department of Assessment and Measurement, Allameh Tabataba'i University, Tehran, Iran
Abstract
Background and Objectives: Today, instruction and learning in old models are not responsive for the learners of the current generation; many studies claim that this generation has different characteristics. According to the distinctive characteristics of this generation, the educational system must respond to their needs. Therefore, the current research aimed to identify the preferred teaching style of digital natives and construct and validate a scale to measure it.
Methods: To achieve the goal of the research, a mixed exploratory design research of instrumental development type was used. In the first stage, 15 students with the characteristics of digital natives in Birjand University, who were identified through the Digital Native Assessment Scale, were given standardized open-ended questions and were interviewed in depth with general guide approach. Interview documents were analyzed using interpretational analysis. In the second step, the results of the first step were organized in the form of a scale to measure the preferred teaching style of digital natives. Then, the designed tool was implemented using the descriptive-survey research method and selecting a sample of 348 students with a combined method (stratified and cluster sampling) from the community of 11,368 students of Birjand University.
Findings: In the first stage, fourteen categories including attention, class atmosphere, goals, prefer image over text, thriving on instant gratification, interaction, motivation, technology integration in teaching, preferred content, multitasking, presentation method, teaching time, teamwork and evaluation were discovered. Based on the results of this stage, the scale was designed and implemented. The results of exploratory factor analysis with the analysis of the main components led to the identification of 31 items with high factor load in 7 components. This questionnaire explained 60.13% of the changes in the preferred teaching style of digital natives in the present research population. The reliability of the total questionnaire was 0.92 and all seven components had the desired reliability.
Conclusion: The study showed that the new generation of learners considered the informal atmosphere and moderation in behavior as part of the requirements of the classroom atmosphere. They prefer real examples and expressions of related or unrelated funny recollections to be attractive activities in attracting attention. Digital native learners prefer professors to express their standards and expectations clearly at the beginning of the semester and believe that this will regulate the student's behavior with the professor expectations and standards. They also emphasize the 70% preference of images over text in presentations. They do not like the teaching method of speech. Using music, PowerPoint, searching through mobile phone and showing movies are the preferred technologies of this generation. They prefer quick feedback, especially on social networks. They prefer face-to-face interaction with professors over other types of interaction. They are against teaching according to the syllabus of the lesson and prefer professors to emphasize on practical material by presenting examples. They are comfortable with multitasking (doing several tasks at the same time) in class, especially if these activities are mobile based. They prefer that the duration of teaching is one hour or less and its timing is adjusted according to the needs of the students. In the end, it is suggested that professors, university lecturers, and instructional designers, while paying attention to generational differences and taking into account the instructional preferences of the new generation, take steps to improve learning and increase the motivation of learners and adapt their approach to the instructional needs of the new generation.
Keywords
COPYRIGHTS
© 2025 The Author(s). This is an open-access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/)
', './data/jte/coversheet/cover_en.jpg'))
Send comment about this article