Engaging millennial students in an engineering classroom using extreme pedagogy

Abstract

Students of the millennial generation, born in the late twentieth century, have been raised in an environment of technology, entertainment, information and social connections. Unlike their predecessors in the previous generation, they have different educational expectations. The differences these students bring to the classroom are a challenge and also an opportunity for the instructors to provide useful learning experiences to these students. Traditional pedagogy, which is characterized by lecture-styled teaching seems to be inappropriate to respond to the needs and characteristics of the millennials. This paper discusses the unique characteristics of the millennial students, limitations of the traditional pedagogy to serve the millennials and proposes a novel pedagogy called, Extreme Pedagogy as an alternative to engage effectively today's students in the engineering classroom.