Analyzing Jeff Nevid's 'Teaching The Millennials'

Jeff Nevid’s, “Teaching the Millennials”, is a refreshing article on the ways in which teachers should approach the newer generation of students (millennials). According to Nevid, “They are our students and we need to explore ways of adapting the college classroom to reach them and teach them more effectively” ( psychologicalscience.org). Millennials have become accustomed to the everyday use of technology in their daily lives. To effectively teach new generation students the author outlines ways in which the instructor should incorporate more interactive and technological tactics. Nevid outlines four central ideas as to how teachers can tackle the task of adequately educating their students. Using technology to enhance good teaching, not replacing good teaching, developing collaborative course assignments, proper usage of the smart classroom, and ground pedagogy in principles of effective learning (the four E’s of

Often, teachers become complacent with the traditional classroom setting and instruction. This complacency can heavily affect one’s students by causing them to be uninterested and uninvolved in their learning. Teachers must liven up the classroom if they strive for impactful instruction of millennial students; however, Nevid posits:

Teaching Millennials effectively doesn’t mean we need to “friend’ them on Facebook or start a thread on Twitter (although that might be an effective way of keeping in touch with them). It does mean we need to reevaluate how we reach them and teach them both inside and outside the classroom (psychologicalscience.org).

Instructors, as stated in the previous quote by the author, must not abandon the old ways of teaching or become overburdened with the chore of utilizing technology as an innovative way of teaching. Teachers need to find a happy medium; a way in which traditional teaching methods interface with contemporary