Classroom 4.0: Understanding the New Battleground

The classroom of today is emerging as a new battleground between the teachers and the students. With a new generation of tech-savvy students—the teachers are facing a complex battle trying to impose the older “chalk and talk” methodology in the face of multiple sources of information. The new generation—increasingly born after 1990s—is extremely reliant on various digital tools for day-to-day work including learning. This has brought the teacher into direct conflict with Google and Wikipedia which are regarded as more learned than the person delivering the knowledge in the classroom. The rising social and digital tensions have made the classroom more of a battlefield with the traditional mode of learning and teaching fighting a losing battle against the new waves of digital invaders. This chapter proposes to look at how the students perceive the new classroom and what role does the various platforms play in terms of classroom interaction. Data for the research was collected from 198 students from various business schools. Exploratory factor analysis using parallel analysis was employed to understand the underlying dimensions and the interrelationships between them. An attempt was also made at using confirmatory factor analysis to understand the dynamics of the relationships. Four dimensions were identified and the paper tries to synthesize the outcomes with classroom teaching and learning in the Indian context.