Mainstreaming tablet classrooms: Engaging first year learners Greg Williams, Barbara White & Jodi Tutty – Refereed paper Mainstreaming tablet classrooms: Engaging first year learners Greg Williams, Barbara White & Jodi Tutty, School of Australian Indigenous Knowledge Systems and School of Information Technology, Charles Darwin University Abstract Young students entering university in the first decade of the twenty first century bring with them a very different set of expectations, skills and attitudes to new technologies than those of previous generations. Born after the computer became a desktop tool, brought up on TV channel surfing and rapid fire video clips, and using mobile phone technology to connect to all who are important in their lives, these students are used to a wired, connected world. How do universities cater for this new generation of learners, building on the sophisticated technological skills these students have already developed while still teaching some of the more traditional academic skills expected when studying at tertiary level? This paper describes the mainstreaming of an innovation that began as a small project two years ago involving three academics from different discipline areas of the University and which is now being mainstreamed to all first year students. The theoretical underpinnings of the innovation and a description of how the learning environment is being used to engage first year learners will be the focus of the discussion. Introduction and the context for change A new breed of students is entering universities in the latter half of this first decade of the 21st century and we, as teachers and lecturers, need to be preparing ourselves for a significant cultural shift in the way that these new students interact with and learn from each other. These are ‘wired’ students; people who have never known a world without the Internet, mobile phones, digital music and electronic connection between friends and relatives. Whilst they are not the only people who come to university, this Net Generation (Oblinger & Oblinger, 2005; Frand, 2000) will become an increasingly significant proportion of the tertiary student population in the next ten to fifteen years and their involvement in tertiary studies will precipitate sweeping changes in the tertiary learning landscape. Their success in tertiary education will depend upon the ability for them to engage with the literacies and culture of the university, but it will also require those of us who teach in tertiary institutions to recognise and respond to these new cohorts of students and embrace the literacies of these new cultures and seek ways of making links from the spatial, visual and technological literacies they bring to the established literacies of the academy. In an attempt to engage Net Generation learners and enhance their first year university experience, we need to explore ways of increasingly incorporating the new literacies of online chatrooms, digital social networks, mobile technologies and the Internet to our learning environments while providing strategies of engagement for these students with the broader social, cultural and intellectual expectations of a tertiary education. In so doing, it is likely that a critical analysis of the pedagogies used at a tertiary level will furnish us with ways of