Hmm interessant werk (Millennial Behaviors & Demographics
By Richard Sweeney)
More Choices; More Selectivity: Millennials expect a much greater array of product and service selectivity. They have grown up with a huge array of choices and they believe that such abundance is their birthright. This is a sea change in consumer behavior. Millennials also feel less need to conform in their consumer choices to everyone else in their generation or to other generations. They desire ultimate consumer control: what they want, how and when they want it. For example, this author typically asks in Millennial focus groups, “What was the last piece of music and genre that you listened to that you chose?” Millennials will choose any or all types of music. No one type of music prevails for the majority. Millennials do not have a generational music. Jazz, country, or classical are as likely as rock or hip hop. This certainly was not true with the previous generations. Another example: I often ask the Millennials, “What is your favorite type of jeans. They are more likely to answer cost, comfort or the cut of the jean than the brand. When they do mention a brand, rarely does more than one person mention the same brand. Impact on academe: Millennials expect significantly increased learning options and far more educational services from their colleges and universities.
Millennials may be the leading consumer edge and the natives of “The Long Tail” phenomena. Chris Anderson in his book, The Long Tail, says,” The Long Tail is nothing more than infinite choice… Abundant, cheap distribution means the audience tends to distribute as widely as the choice. “ The idea is that more efficient, and economical distribution systems (e.g. via the internet) are making a much wider array of products and services more available and cost effective. Because Millennials grew up with a much wider array of services and products they expect them in every service, including their college or university. The converse is, of course, also true: Millennials are most unhappy with limited choices (e.g. when there is only one professor teaching a particular required course).
Experiential and Exploratory Learners: Millennials strongly prefer learning by doing. They almost never read the directions; love to learn by doing, by interacting. Multiplayer gaming, computer simulations, and social networks are some of their favorite environments and provide little penalty for trial and error learning. By and large, in my focus groups, Millennials have said that they find their average lectures boring. With such experiential learning, the Millennial gets lots of interactivity and feedback about what works and what does not. Example: there are virtual chemistry experiments and exercises on the web offered by Davidson University. Another example: freshmen Millennials at NJIT often will find a more engaging biomedical engineering class that has only 15 minutes of lecture followed by 75 minutes of building a machine that can suture fingers (actually hot dogs). Impact on academe: Millennials are more engaged through active learning, effective experiential processes such as games, case studies, hands-on experiences, and simulations that can speed their learning and hold their interest.
Flexibility / Convenience: Millennials prefer to keep their time and commitments flexible longer in order to take advantage of better options; they also expect other people and institutions to give them more flexibility. They want to “time and place shift” their services, to have them where and when they are ready. They want more granularity in the services so they can be interrupted and finish when they are ready without any loss or productivity. Example: they will often delay to the last possible moment their important choices such as jobs and college selection so as to not foreclose a better option later. Example: In some colleges and universities, I have discovered, on-campus Millennial students are often opting to take “distance education” courses, even when they prefer a face to face course. This is because they can attend such courses in their own time and preferred location. They opt for the convenience and flexibility. Impact on academe: colleges and universities have to find alternatives to the lock step credit hour and semester systems, to courses essentially taught by a single professor, and to other flexibility and convenience areas that might involve systemic change.
Personalization and Customization: Once Millennials do make their choices in products and services, they expect them to have as much personalization and customization features as possible to meet their changing needs, interests and tastes. Example: they will change their cell phone caller rings so they can tell who is calling them by the type of ring. Another example, a student, particularly one that might have a reading comprehension problem may find it easier to learn by listening to the ‘textbook” than reading it. Impact on academe: colleges and universities must provide personalized systems that both constantly monitor and coach students-intervening as needed. Such personalized monitoring should be continuous, not just a few times a semester. The current process of assessment and feedback is cumbersome and slow and loses many students.
Impatience: Millennials, by their own admission, have no tolerance for delays. They expect their services instantly when they are ready. They require almost constant feedback to know how they are progressing. Their worst nightmare is when they are delayed, required to wait in line, or have to deal with some other unproductive process. Their desire for speed and efficiency can not be over estimated. The need for speedy satisfaction, or as some believe instant gratification, permeates virtually all of their service expectations. Example, a student who does not get an immediate response from a faculty member by email will write several emails within a short time, each more insistent. Impact on academe: college and universities are beginning to use automated systems that give almost immediate answers based upon previous questions asked in addition to answers from expert faculty. Instant messaging rather than email will be used more often for such quick assistance.
Practical, Results Oriented: Millennials are interested in processes and services that work and speed their interactions. They prefer merit systems to others (e.g. seniority). Millennials are furious when they feel they are wasting their time; they want to learn what they have to learn quickly and move on. Millennials have no tolerance for services that do not continuously and reliably work. Example, if a student believes that a particular teacher is ineffective, he or she will do whatever it takes to find another teacher, even taking a distance education class. Impact on academe: colleges and universities will have to solve real Millennial problems with their teaching and delivery systems and not let them fester. In this more competitive environment, students will go elsewhere if they do not get the desired result.
Multitaskers: Millennials excel at juggling several tasks at once since this an efficient, practical use of their time and, as already noted, they are very impatient. Multitasking can enable them to accelerate their learning by permitting them to accomplish more than one task at the same time. They do want to use their time most efficiently and multitasking offers them more options. For example, a student may download and listen to a lecture while doing his/her laundry or exercising. Another example: the research shows that Millennials will almost never instant message someone without doing some other task(s) simultaneously. Impact on academe: colleges and universities will have to enable and encourage widespread recording and downloading from the web (or iTunes U) of lectures and learning modules.
Digital Natives: Millennials clearly adapt faster to computer and internet services because they have always had them. While they still clearly want and expect expert teachers in a face-to-face environment, they expect the speed, convenience, flexibility and power provided by digitally provided services and resources. Provide every service digitally, they tell us, and let us decide how much we will use the face to face versus the online. I have heard about students at one university who must take all of their math classes and exams online from a math lab complain that they also need more face-to-face time. They also complain that the graduate student “math coaches” in the lab are not responsive and that the computers often are broken or unavailable. Millennials are practical, if they are offered a service, they expect it to work. Millennials expect all their academic services to be integrated digitally online so that they can pick and choose how they want to learn and when they want to learn. Impact on academe: every aspect of colleges and universities must be seamlessly woven with digital service options.
Gamers: Millennials have spent thousands of hours playing electronic, computer and video games. They love the constant interactivity, full motion multimedia, colorful graphics, the ability to learn and progress to higher levels, and the ability to collaborate with friends in their learning and competitions. Gaming is already beginning to have a very significant impact upon their expectations for learning and, in some cases, beginning to find its way into higher education. Gaming offers thrills, competition, engagement and a rich array of emotional stimuli that also enhance learning. There is, after all, strong evidence that the evolution of the emotions in humans occurred as an improved memory device. Thus intense fear or sadness causes us to remember certain events or situations longer. There are a number of educational games listed on Marc Prensky’s web site (
Marc Prensky.com) and on (
TWITCHSPEED.COM Digital Game-Based Learning). Impact on academe: colleges and universities have to find more ways to create and or use academic games in student learning environments but should not expect individual faculty to create these given the current reward structures.
Nomadic Communication Style: Millennials have more friends and communicate with them more frequently using IM (instant messaging), text messaging, cell phones as well as more traditional communication channels. They are prolific communicators. They love and expect communication mobility; to remain in constant touch wherever and whenever, un-tethered. This is their firm desire to do whatever they need to do, obtain any services independent of their geography or distance. This is particularly important since they typically don’t have “offices “ at their college or university. Millennials are much more likely to instant or text message more frequently than they email. They are also much less likely to send a U.S. mail letter than the older generations. It’s interesting to note that even their communications are speeded by using shorthand, coded, or abbreviated text. Millennials typically have many more buddies on their IM lists than the older generations, although their faculty are typically not included. Example, some university admissions and library reference librarians (e.g.
QandANJ - Live Answers 24/7) are providing instant messaging so that they can quickly answer students on their preferred communication channel. Impact on academe: it is clear that colleges and universities must get students quick feedback, anytime, anywhere, on their desired communication channels (IM, text messaging, cell phones, email, etc.). Millennials expect that they should be able “pull” their grades, course schedules and other information automatically (e.g. RSS feeds to their cell phone text messages) as well as obtain human assistance whenever and wherever needed.
Media/ Format Agnostic: Millennials most enjoy interactive full motion multimedia, color images, and audio although they can use any media, even text. Current examples include Vodcasting and iPodcasting. Impact on academe: colleges and universities have to provide appropriate learning multimedia learning both in the classrooms as well as outside of the classrooms if they are to compete for this generation. Relying on senior tenured faculty to develop such multimedia learning options will result in losing students to competitors. Such multimedia is key to engaging Millennials. Impact on academe: colleges and universities must institutionally develop such multimedia, perhaps using open source material but certainly sharing development costs.
Collaboration & Intelligence: After many years of collaborating at schools, day care, soccer teams, orchestras, peer-to peer networks, games, and other programmed activities, Millennials know how and when to work with other people more effectively. Even those who do not prefer collaboration typically do so, if they think it gives them a practical advantage. They respect intelligence and education; “it is cool to be smart”. They are electing to go onto college and graduate work in far greater numbers than previous generations and this is an opportunity to hire smart students to help create games and multimedia learning options as well as solve serious problems with student learning. Example: peer to peer just-in-time collaborative learning is happening more often than ever before as a way for students to learn from each other. Impact upon academe: colleges and universities, not just individual faculty, have to do far more in creating collaborative technology so that two or more students can work together faster, more effectively and more comfortably.
Balanced Lives: They don’t want to work 80 hours a week and sacrifice their health and their leisure time, even for considerably higher salaries. Yet they expect to earn incomes exceeding their parents. Example, Millennials are more likely to be involved in some extra curricula activities, work or personal commitments and this affects their learning performance. Impact on academe: give them more flexibility; fewer fixed deadlines. For example, a three credit course might be broken down into six half credit mini-courses offered in a week rather then over a fifteen week semester. Impact on academe: colleges and universities must offer a wider range or learning alternatives as well as a wider range of extracurricular opportunities.
Less Reading: Millennials, disturbingly, are not reading literature or newspapers as much as previous generations of the same age. In fact, reading is down for most age groups but the decline has been greatest among the youngest adult population. Certainly this is caused in part by the increase in the competition from entertainment and educational options. A Millennial will be playing a game more often than reading a book. This is most disturbing because reading is a very efficient means of communicating knowledge. Furthermore less reading is likely to cause a decline in student writing skills. Impact on academe: colleges and universities will have to integrate “reading and writing opportunities” to a greater extent across the curriculum. E-portfolios can be one effective way to increase both reading and writing skills by better engaging Millennials.
Other Characteristics: There are many other behaviors that characterize Millennials, but they have far less impact upon academe. For instance, they are direct, often to the point of appearing rude. They believe that they are all “above average”; to be average is really to be mediocre. They are very confident, perhaps because their Boomer parents constantly told them that they would succeed at whatever they did. They typically led more structured lives, imbued with Boomer parents values who expected them all to excel and go to the very best schools. There is evidence that Millennial values are more aligned with their parents than those of previous generations, although most Boomers and Gen Xers do not believe this is so. Millennials also are more likely to have a close friend of a different ethnicity than themselves and therefore have more tolerance for cultural differences. They are certainly more traveled.
