Thanks to Diane Zorich for alerting us to the latest egregious neologism to bump into our way:

“Immersive, Collaborative Simulations and Neomillennial Learning Styles: Implications for Higher Education”

“Emerging interactive media are shaping users’ motivations, attributes and social patterns into types of learning styles quite different from those based on sensory, personality, or intelligence factors. “Neomillennial” learners seek educational situations that interweave face-to-face interactions with shared virtual experiences across distance and time (distance-learning). This session will demonstrate examples of game-like, immersive, collaborative simulations and will discuss implications of neomillennial learning styles for higher education.”

[From a Princeton lunchtime lecture series announcement]

If I’m not mistaken (and I’m sitting here with the dictionary open, so I am not mistaken), the prefix “neo” means “recent or new.” As in: “New; recent: neonatal. New and different: Neo-Freudian. New and abnormal: neoplasm.”

So what in the world does “neomillennial” mean?

“Millennial” means of or pertaining to a span of a thousand years. Therefore, “neomillennial” would mean “recently pertaining to a span of a thousand years,” “new and different span of a thousand years” or — and this is the one I suspect is correct — “new and abnormal span of a thousand years.”

Learning styles for a new and abnormal span of a thousand years? Okay. That might be fun to listen to along with lunch.

But wait — the “Webster’s New Millennium™ Dictionary of English” (note: not “Webster’s Neomillennial Dictionary”) defines “millennial” as “a member of the generation born of baby boomers in the 20th century and reaching young adulthood at the start of the 21st century
Example: Millennials wield a toolkit that includes Excel spreadsheets, administrator’s numbers on cell-phone speed dials, and blogs. Etymology: 1991. Usage: also millennial generation (n.)”

Therefore, a NEO-millennial would be…?

The subject of this lecture apparently has to do with Learning Styles in the New Millennium. Our new millennium, that is: there have been a few others previously, and there just might be more, and the word “millennial” can refer to any of them. But that’s nit picking. However, if one considers Webster’s New Millennium Dictionary’s definition, and tacks on the prefix “neo-” one comes up with “a new and abnormal form of late 20th-century-early-21st-century kids with mobile phones.” Interesting.

Okay, so let’s consider the heart of the matter. The lecture blurb touts “types of learning styles quite different from those based on sensory, personality, or intelligence factors.” This does indeed support my theory about abnormality. If we take the five senses, personalities, and intelligence factors out of learning styles, we’re left with…? Science fiction, perhaps? Quite thought-provoking, the idea of leaving intelligence out of learning. After all, it’s so …premillennial.

“Neomillennial learners seek educational situations that interweave face-to-face interactions with shared virtual experiences across distance and time (distance-learning).” I could have sworn that, way back in the previous millennium, my interactions with professors in the lecture hall and seminar room were face-to-face, and that the books I read brought me vivid virtual experiences across distance and time.

There is only one learning style, in any millenium. And that is critical thinking. Blurb writers of the New Millemium, beware.

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