Four Facts About Contemporary and Traditional Age College Students
Contemporary College Students are typically characterized in university and scholastic settings as those over the age of 25.
Digital Natives are defined as people born or brought up during the age of digital technology and therefore familiar with computers and the internet from an early age. (Oxford Dictionary)
Traditional age students spend more time with technology but that does not translate into having greater ability with technology (Kwok-Wing & Hong, 2015).
No significant difference in ability was found in a study regarding different generations in performing academic technology tasks (Kwok-Wing & Hong, 2015).
The percentage of “digital natives” that use technology in a creative way with school work is still much smaller than those who do not. Digital Natives primarily use technology for communication not for creativity (Pechenkina & Aeschliman, 2017).
Contemporary Students employ different ways of learning technology based on past experience; they often use tacit knowledge to assist them in figuring out new technology, digital natives tend to use explicit knowledge. (Kenner & Weinerman, 2011).