Teaching Strategies for the Net Generation

To date, more than 30 books and scores of articles and chapters have been written on the Net Generation.They describe their distinguishing characteristics from previous generations and their implications for education, the workplace, and the political, social, and economic arenas.The problem is that is no consensus on those characteristics, the birth dates for defining this population, the names for this generation, and whether it is even possible to identify a clear-cut profile.For the 18-years-old to 20-something group of current undergraduate and graduate students in this cohort, general guidelines for teaching strategies have been proffered by a few educational researchers.The purposes of the article are to furnish a clarification of the issues creating confusion for faculty and administrators and to suggest specific directions for future teaching in this digital culture.It will synthesize the research evidence from 10 major national and international surveys of this generation and the latest thinking on their educational implications.The material is organized into four sections: (1) defining this generation by birth date and name, (2) characteristics of Net Geners, (3) teaching strategies for Net Geners, and (4) epilogue.