A Comparison of Generation Z and Millennial Dental Hygiene Students’ Preferred Learning Styles

INTRODUCTION

An understanding of student learning preferences has long been of interest to educators. While older generations have been discussed in generational research, the introduction of the internet led to increased research and documentation of the Millennial generation.¹ Generational researchers Howe and Strauss were one of the first to identify the Millennial generation and described them as special, sheltered, confident, team-oriented, achieving, pressured, and conventional.² A subsequent generation, Generation Z, has now entered college which creates interest in their preferences as well. Seemiller and Grace conducted one of the first studies on Generation Z college students and identified them as loyal, compassionate, thoughtful, responsible, and open-minded.³

Generations have been defined as a cohort-group born during the same historical moment who share collective attitudes about family, institutions, lifestyle, and the future.⁴ Generational cohorts share common cultural and historical experiences that affect their preferences, views, and understanding of the world.⁵ Each generation has attitudes about learning and society which were affected by events around them. Generational researchers have cautioned that generational themes will have outliers, so generational research needs to be viewed as informative and an opportunity to understand the views and preferences of each generation.⁵

Compared to generations before them, Millennials have been written about and studied extensively. The introduction of the internet resulted in the Millennial generation becoming the most documented and researched generation.¹ Generational researchers Howe and Strauss published extensively on this generation and initially set their birth years from 1982 to 2002;² however most researchers now list the birth range for Millennials as 1982 to 1994.^3,6 While some researchers have labeled this cohort as Generation Y, the Millennial title has become more common. Millennials, so named because they graduated high school in 2000, were shaped by 9/11, terrorism, and the rise of mobile devices.⁶ Millennials value teamwork, interactive learning, feedback, and close relationships with authority figures.⁶ In addition, since Millennial learners have experienced global instability and disappointment in prominent authority figures, they appreciate fairness, feedback, and impartiality from faculty.⁷ These cultural and historical influences affected the Millennial generation’s attitudes about learning and created the need for more insight into their learning styles.

While initially dubbed the Homeland generation by Howe and Strauss,⁸ Generation Z has become the identifier used by researchers and the media. Seemiller and Grace studied Generation Z college students and identified their birth range as 1995 to 2010.³ As with other generations, these birth ranges may evolve as research continues. Generation Z experienced an economic crash, school violence, and a highly technological era.³ These influences have been identified as influencing Generation Z to be risk-averse and more financially conservative than previous generations.⁹ In addition, Generation Z students are concerned about the cost of college and desire practical educational experiences that translate to real-world employment.¹⁰ Seemiller and Grace predicted that this generation will inherit the responsibility and independence of their Generation X parents which may play a role in these attitudes.³

Since Generation Z students have now entered higher education, interest in their preferences and learning styles has increased. Seemiller and Grace conducted an early study of Generation Z college students and surveyed students on their characteristics, motivations, and learning.³ Generation Z students described themselves as loyal, compassionate, thoughtful, responsible, and open-minded.³ Although these students used phones to connect with others, many stated they preferred face-to-face communication.³ These communication preferences were shown to affect their learning styles. While Generation Z students preferred intrapersonal learning; they wanted to learn independently prior to beginning group work.¹¹ In addition, these students reported that they enjoy a combination of independent and hands-on learning with engaging and supportive instructors.³ While Millennials currently make up the largest adult generation, Generation Z is growing and predicted to be the best educated and most diverse generation.^3,5,12

Educators and researchers have used learning style inventories to help understand student learning and effective approaches to teaching. Learning styles are a set of factors, attitudes, or behaviors that group the common ways people learn.¹³ A person’s learning style affects the way they choose to approach a learning situation. These learning styles may be innate or change over time depending on the age and environment of the student.¹⁴ Also, students may have a dominant learning style or use different styles in different circumstances.¹³ Researchers continue to use learning styles measures such as the Felder-Soloman Index of Learning Styles (ILS) in educational research.

The ILS has been used extensively in educational research. The initial inventory developed by Felder and Silverman in 1988 defined preferred learning style based on five dimensions: the type of information perceived (sensory versus intuitive), through which sensory channel external information is perceived (visual versus auditory), the way information is organized (inductive versus deductive), how information is processed (active versus reflective), and how students progress toward understanding (sequential versus holistic).¹⁵ Based on continued research findings, the ILS was modified in 2002 to better evaluate how students are taught. The inductive/deductive dimension was deleted, and the visual/auditory dimension was changed to visual/verbal to better explain a learning style where spoken and written words were preferred.¹⁶ Each dimension of the ILS indicates a students’ learning preference. Active learners prefer working in groups and active experimentation, while reflective learners prefer observation and working independently.¹⁷ Sensing learners prefer facts and data, while intuitive learners prefer theories and innovation; visual learners remember what they see, and verbal learners remember what they hear and then say.¹⁷ Finally, sequential learners follow linear reasoning and are strong at analysis while global learners are better at divergent thinking and intuitive leaps.¹⁷

The ILS has been used to determine preferred learning styles in health care education research nationally and internationally. A study of Saudi Arabian nursing students found preferences for active and visual learning styles with most students balanced between the sensing/intuitive and sequential/global dimensions.¹⁸ Also, Turkish nursing students preferred the active, sensing, visual, and sequential learning dimensions.¹⁹ In a study of undergraduate anatomy students in the United States (US), a majority of students preferred active, sensing, visual, and sequential learning styles.¹³ This study also analyzed preferred learning style by college major and found the pre-dental and pre-dental hygiene students overwhelmingly preferred the active, sensing, visual, and sequential dimensions.¹³ Further, Saudi Arabian dental students preferred the active, sensing, visual, and global dimensions,²⁰ while Brazilian dental students were sensing and visual learners with balanced preferences in the active/reflective and sequential/global domains.²¹ Students in health care fields preferred the sensing and visual learning dimension with some variation in preference for the active/reflective and sequential/global domains.

The ILS has also been used to compare learning styles between generations. A survey of Brazilian dental students found no significant difference between the learning style preferences of Millennial and Generation Z students.²¹ In a study of higher education online learners in the US, Baby Boomers preferred reflective, sensing, and verbal dimensions while Generation X and Millennial students preferred the active, intuitive, and visual dimensions; all three generations preferred the global dimension.²² Another study in the US compared Baby Boomer, Generation X, and Millennial adults and found no significant difference between the three generational cohorts studied.¹⁷ All three generational groups preferred the sensing, visual, and sequential dimensions of the ILS, with the Millennial preference for active over reflective learning slightly but not significantly higher than the older generations.¹⁷ A small study of engineering students in the Philippines found that Millennials preferred reflective while Generation Z preferred active learning with both generations preferring the sensing, visual, and sequential domains.²³ Studies utilizing the ILS have found similarities in students’ learning styles regardless of country.

Current research on the preferred learning styles of Generation Z and Millennial dental hygiene students is limited. Approximately 48% of dental hygiene students in accredited US programs are under the age of 23 and part of Generation Z while 43% are between the ages of 24 and 34 and part of the Millennial generation.²⁴ Although Generation Z students are now equal to their Millennial counterparts in dental hygiene education, studies that compare these two generational cohorts have been limited. One study reported ILS scores for students in an undergraduate anatomy course of which 16 were pre-dental hygiene students¹³ and another study from 2009, examined the learning style preferences of Millennial dental hygiene students using the Learning Type Measure.²⁵ More research is needed to determine the differences between Millennial and Generation Z dental hygiene students. Therefore, the purpose of this quantitative comparative study was to determine whether there was a difference between Generation Z and Millennial dental hygiene students in preferred learning styles.