The New Millenium
Learners Era: Concept,
Consequence and Change
Øystein Johannessen
Centre for Educational Research
and Innovation, OECD
Nordlet Forum
Umeå, 18 Sep 2009

Topics
• Concept: The New Millenium Learners
and Technology Impact
• Consequence: The OECD NML Project
• Change:
– Revised models?
– Learner Voice
• Documentation
– http://www.slideshare.net/oysteinj/
– http://oysteinj.typepad.com/

The life of the NMLs
• Nafiza, 18 years old

Facts about New Millenium Learners
• Almost everybody has access to PCs and the
Internet
• Early birds. Usage increases with age.
• Social media plays an important role. 7 of 10
use social media regularly.
• Social media: Socialisation, identity formation
and fun
• Harassment an important challenge

Technology Impact: What have we
learnt from R&D?
• Search for causality and statistical significance
• Output, outcome and impact (Impact 2, 2002)
• Impact 2: ICT leads to statistically significant
improvements of educational attainment in
some subjects.
• OECD: Interesting correlations regarding use
of ICT and PISA scores
• eLearning Nordic 2006: All stakeholder groups
state that ICT has a positive impact on pupils’
learning
• R&D on patterns of use and across the
spectrum of learning technologies
• Perceived impact ------- Causality and
stastistical significance

Becta says…..
• Overall there is a strong body of evidence linking
the use of technology to improvements in
learning and outcomes for learners. The
relationship is not a simple one. Time taken to
embed the use of technology, school-level
planning and learner competency and focus of
use, and link to models of learning are all
important in mediating the impact of technology
on outcomes
– Source: Becta, Evidence on the impact of technology on
learning and educational outcomes, 2009

21st Century Skills Assessement Project:
Goals of the project
 Build a collaboration to leverage ongoing work.
 Identify and address issues in four areas:
– Connection of assessments to 21st century classroom practices
and environments to increase scalability.
– Definition of 21st Century skills and competencies in
measurable ways.
– Methodological issues that address rigor and validity.
– Technological barriers related to networking, security, scale,
software applications.
 Indicators of success
– Acceptance, recognition, and participation by stakeholders
– Problems identified, solutions developed, and widely available.
– ICT-based assessment of 21st c skills incorporated into national
and international assessments.
8

Cognitive skills Social values and
development lifestyles
•Visual-spatial skills
•Media competition
•Non verbal intelligence
•Socialisation in the third space
•Lack of evidence in other areas
•Importance of videogames as
threshold lowerers:
•Stereotypes
•Violence/agression/authority?
Educational
achievement
•No conclusive evidence
•Lack of appropriate methodologies:
•Large longitudinal studies
•Large-scale experiments 9
•Unexplained phenomena

Not all learners share the same
relationship to digital media
10

A new digital divide emerges?

NMLs: A challenge for
government
• Professor Henry Jenkins, USC
• Tony Richardson, Becta

Change
• Education under pressure
– Formal vs informal learning
– Education as social equalizer
• Revised models: Greather emphasis on
incremental, coherent and iterative
models?
• Benchmarks and indicators
• Learner Voices

Hierarchy of benchmarks?
• First order benchmarks: Access
• Second order benchmarks:
– Patterns of use
– Amount of use
• Third order benchmarks: Effects,
Impact
• Source: Johannessen, 2009

21st Century Skills – embedded or not?
Policy triangle
Curriculum
Assessment Competences among
Teachers and principals

Learner Voices
• Planned (not yet decided) activity in
the NML-project
• Analytical strand: Research review
• Empirical strand:
– Survey
– Video library
• Policy strand: Implications

Because they deserve it
Oystein.Johannessen@oecd.org
http://slideshare.net/oysteinj/
http://oysteinj.typepad.com/