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The challenge of multigenerational diversity and the Nursing Educator in the 21st-century learning environment

Over the years, the number of nurse educators has dwindled. Without quality educators, the nursing profession will not survive the shortage crises that it is now facing. There are large numbers of nurses who wish to pursue higher education are denied as there is a decreasing acceptance rate at the master’s level in part to its highly selective requirements for admission. These challenges result in there, not being enough newer nurse educators who are able to fill the gap of the current nurse educator population that is aging and retiring. For those nursing educators that remain, they face a wide array of challenges in the educational environment.

The face of nursing is becoming more dynamic and more diverse, nurse educators must therefore adapt to this change. One challenge that educators face is the influx of intergenerational students that are currently in the classes. The similarities and differences in generational status between professors and students can involve both student perceptions of faculty and faculty approaches to students. Among the areas that affect intergenerational classroom experiences are the impact of technology on student preparation and engagement, the emergence of new hybrid models, and ageist views of the faculty by students and that of students and vice versa. The technology gap can represent a generational divide within faculty cohorts with senior faculty expressing the need to keep up with current trends and even with some more senior students who are less conversant with technological developments. Diversity in the classroom may be related to the varying intellectual abilities and social skills of the students. This requires that the nurse educator facilitate the learning needs of a very diverse population of students.

Learners may have different learning styles and abilities. To achieve effective learning outcomes, the science of instruction and instructional design models are used to guide the development of instructional design strategies that elicit appropriate cognitive processes. Instructional design is a systematic process of teaching and learning activities in which learning is organized and in which every component is crucial to successful learning. This includes the teachers, students, materials, and the learning environment.  The factors in the instructional design process are all interrelated and often affect each other to an extent for effective teaching and learning activities. Every detail can play an essential role during the implementation of your learning activity, therefore if in the design process, the goals and objectives are not chosen, specified, or written properly, then the proceeding steps will contain some issues. These principles can be implemented using different delivery or teaching methods to create effective learning environments. During the teaching and learning process, the teacher should collect reliable data about the students, their backgrounds, and their prerequisite learning, this means knowing your audience. This will help address the challenges faced with student diversity as it pays attention to instruction from the learner perspective rather than the content perspective, which is a traditional approach. The major goal of instructional design is to demonstrate planning, developing, evaluating, and managing the instructional process. Teachers must be alert to the need for continual updating of their teach­ing skills and practices. In this digital age, they are to ensure that all students are supported at all levels of digital literacies so that everyone succeeds, regardless of age. Instructors should make sure that they foster an environment in which all levels of experience are respected as a source of wisdom. They are also encouraged to use processes and content which best encompass students’ values and classroom preferences, and which are most effective in avoiding or defusing classroom conflicts among students related to age diversities. Group assignments with members of each generation included can also be effective as students can learn from each other’s experiences and talents. Effective instruction requires the teacher to step outside the realm of personal experiences into the world of the learner, as it is the learner who must be engaged for learning to occur.