One of the recommended readings this week for Foundations of Instructional Design was What are Modern Learners Looking for in 2024? which is an impressive collection of buzzwords and unsupported assertions. As I wondered how they came to their conclusions, it occurred to me that they may have hallucinated the entire thing. So I though it was only appropriate to set it to music:
- Digital Dreams
- The Rise of Personalization
- The Rise of Tomorrow
- Modern Learners
- Learning Together
- Lifelong Learning
- Digital Togetherness
- Harmony in Diversity
- Education Revolution
- Navigating the Divide
How do they know what modern learners want? Is it reasonable to generalize about them like this? And did ChatGPT write this?
The company behind SimpliAssess is Mundrisoft, an IT company with a penchant for jargon and buzzwords. SimpliAssess is a product they are promoting to corporate and educational markets. Their analysis of modern learners comes not from research, as far as we can tell, but from an effort to create a sense of need for products like SimpliAssess, I suppose. If we look at the titles of their other blog posts we see phrases like “Buy vs Build” and “Why Migrating Makes Financial Sense” which add to the marketing-pitch theme. They tell us modern learners are “Tech-Savvy and Digitally Empowered,” but like any other demographic, they are also tech-averse and on the wrong side of digital divides. Some may “crave dynamic, interactive digital experiences that transcend the boundaries of time and space,” but right now our library printers have been running nonstop for the past 3 hours or so because many modern learners refer to read paper rather than screens.
