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"When Victoria Rosario, the associate vice chancellor of the Los Rios Community College District, wrote her Ph.D. dissertation on generational differences in technology adoption in 2012, she included a finding that will likely resonate with many higher education professionals: “The perception of what a technological innovation is to a boomer is not an innovation to a millennial or Gen Xer.”
That insight, along with others from her research, now informs Rosario’s approach to new initiatives at Los Rios. With four colleges and six education centers serving more than 77,000 students, the California district caters to an incredibly wide range of learners. That challenges administrators to choose, implement and launch technology tools that work well for everyone— and that everyone will embrace.
Universities Now Have Vast Demographic Diversity
Colleges across the country are confronting this dilemma, as demographic shifts move us further away from the 18- to 22-year-old group that once defined the typical college student. Today, the population of learners who are age 25 or older is growing faster than the traditional college-age group, a surge projected to continue. Add professional development and continuing education programs to the mix, and the age diversity gets even wider. Now yet another demographic group, Gen Z, is poised to begin their college careers.
College campuses, of course, are also employers, and here too we see an increasingly multigenerational workforce. Millennials, who now make up the largest group in the labor force, are staff members and even faculty. Meanwhile, plenty of baby boomers are still on the job, and will be for a long time. Together, all these factors create a generational mix of students, staff members and faculty that is often dynamic, perplexing and challenging."
Read more at EdTech