Attending a Pecha Kucha event in Barcelona, where the audience was mostly in their twenties or thirties, I was struck by a number of thoughts:

• Generation Y (born during the eighties and nineties) is a generation that wants to change the world. The presenters at the Pecha Kucha event  strove to change people’s minds or present a different perspective from the ‘norm’. This is not unlike the era of the sixties, when ‘the flower power’ movement brought about massive changes in how the young were perceived.  Now, instead of(or to supplement) the message of ‘peace’, the calling cry is to ‘save the planet’.  Generation Y is one that sincerely wants to see action taken to improve the world for all its inhabitants. And Generation Z (those born after 1995) is likely to continue feeling this way. This implies that learning professionals will need to include such topics as an integral part of their teaching. Tasks and activities will be more motivating if they in some way relate to environmental or social issues.
• Gen Y, and to an even greater extent, Gen Z, is collaborative and open-minded, butterfly-like in their concentration. The Pecha Kucha presentations consisted of a maximum of 20 slides set on a timing of 20 seconds each (ie: a little over 6 minutes for the whole presentation). It is still the case today that most management teaching takes place in fixed-seating classrooms, with an audience watching (and perhaps listening) to the person on the stage for somewhere between 90 and 120 minutes. This again has to change if the participants’ attention is to be maintained – learning professionals will have to find ways to present key concepts in less than 15 minutes and then move on to other activities or tasks – learning has to be in bite-size chunks, and with much group work, discussion and inter-personal interaction.
• Gen Y is willing to spend a great deal of time and effort on creating and maintaining their networks, and they are far more confident of approaching others than previous generations. At the Pecha Kucha event, I was struck by how easily the participants interacted with each other. Web 2.0 social technologies have enabled people to make contact with others across distance, language and time barriers – it is no longer the case that people make friends merely with their peer group at school or university. On the contrary, many of the 300+ million members of Facebook use the platform to generate their primary friendship group. And the number of topics and subjects discussed on social websites is mind-boggling in its diversity. The implications are that group or team projects should be designed to include people from outside the learning group itself. Course and programmes that include participants separated by time, distance and nationality are much more likely to attract the attention of the learners and motivate them to complete the project or activity. Rather than trying to curb interaction with externals, teachers should leverage the power of social networking, including allowing students to get in contact with other experts in the field.

How do you think learning professionals need to adapt their teaching methodology and content?