Abstract:

Research suggests that current curricula and pedagogy need to change to effectively support Alpha Generation children in elementary and middle school and the iGen, also known as Gen Z, university students. Born after 2012, Alphas, truly the “digital-first” generation, have grown up tapping on screens, not watching television, or sitting with paper-based books. The iGen students, born between 1995 and 2012, are the “first generation to spend their entire adolescence in the age of the smartphone. With social media and texting replacing other activities, iGen spends less time with their friends in person” (Twenge, 2017). Toward addressing the learning needs of Alphas in Kindergarten through sixth grade and iGen university students, we have been conducting a study of how deeply-digital, highly-interactive curricula plus digitally-motivated, pedagogical practices can increase their engagement and achievement.

The Collabrify Roadmap platform enables educators to use skillful pedagogy to create deeply digital, motivating, and meaningful lessons, units, and whole-year curricula as well as differentiate to meet all learners’ needs. Faculty from three universities and a team of classroom teachers collaborated to further the Collabrify Roadmap Platform, an OER-based digital learning environment developed by the Center for Digital Curricula at the University of Michigan. They created year-long, deeply-digital, standards-aligned CCSS curricula for the four core subjects (math, English language arts, science, and social studies) for K - 6 as well professional learning resources and professional development for teachers. Over the past three years, 10,000+ children, from low socio-economic-status (SES), K-5 schools in Michigan and pre- and in-service teacher education students, have been using deeply-digital, standards-aligned, “Roadmap” curricula we have developed. Teachers and administrators have reported increased student engagement and achievement as measured by surveys and tests (e.g., iReady, NWEA, M-Step, and iStation).

The deeply-digital lessons are device-independent and browser-based, the Platform supports a range of Alpha- and iGen-aligned learning practices. For example, the Platform makes it easy for students to synchronously collaborate, e.g., a student, quarantined at home, can talk through the computer to a student in the classroom, as they work in the same document. Deeply-digital lessons are expressed as visual lesson plans. On a lesson, a learner can literally see where learning starts, where it ends, and all the learning activities along the way. Learning activities are encapsulated in nodes; click a node and the hyperlink takes the student to a learning activity. Learning activities can point to OER or they can point to licensed, commercial materials. Our lessons are open – any URL can be included in a lesson.

Our presentation will describe more fully our university partnership as well as impact of the deeply-digital curricula on the Alpha Generation and iGen learners and the impact these curricula are having on classroom teachers.

Keywords:

Deeply-digital Curricula, Alpha Generation, iGen, Curricula, Differentiation, Pedagogy, Partnerships, Collaboration.