Others have postulated that the relative ease with which we can now filter out opinions or ideas or issues that we aren’t already interested in — through news filters, RSS, etc. (why not link Steven’s posts?) — means that we aren’t exposed to much breadth of opinions/ideas/issues and this can make us less tolerant of those that don’t match our own. Perhaps the rise of social networking technologies extends that line of argument to people; the easier it becomes to meet people who share your passions, the less tolerant you are of those who don’t. And assigned groupwork (in an undergrad environment anyway) is more likely to put you in with the latter than the former. So the Millennials/netgen/genY may in fact be less likely to want to learn through groupwork even though they like working in groups.

To go on way too long, I think this is one of many examples of using the generational literature to come to conclusions it doesn’t necessarily support. Students like working in groups therefore they must like groupwork. Students have grown up using computers so they must all be tech savvy. These things don’t necessarily follow, and in the case of techology, a lot of the empirical research out there doesn’t bear it out.