An International Meeting of the American Accounting Association 2005 Annual Meeting August 7–10, 2005 San Francisco, California Come to the City by the Bay!

Effective Learning Strategies Forum
Monday, August 8, 2005

Session 25
Using Readiness Questions to Foster Engagement from Net Generation Learners

Presenters:
A. Faye Borthick, Georgia State University
Carol W. Springer, Georgia State University

Description:
This session offers an approach for fostering engagement from learners from the Net Generation, students that grew up with digital toys and tools. The approach is to stage a Saving Sergeant Pabletti kind of epiphany as students begin work on significant assignments. The epiphany refers to learners’ reaction to a U.S. Army video game for new recruits. When they first play the game, recruits are unable to save their sergeant after he is shot accidentally. The sergeant dies because the recruits fail to learn and apply their lessons. In subsequent game plays, recruits typically heed the lessons, shifting from unproductive to productive behaviors that enable them to save the sergeant. The analogy for education is to offer readiness questions that serve a similar function for major assignments—a wakeup call to learners indicating the need to think more deeply about the assignment than they did initially. Participants will (1) learn how to develop readiness questions, (2) see examples for a variety of learning outcomes, and (3) receive guidance for staging epiphany-type questions.

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