Multitasking is the ability to pay attention to more than one thing at a time. But bow does it work? Is it like spot-focusing and switching quickly between several objects or activities or is it sort of zooming out the “spotlight” and taking in all at once?
A study at McGill University found evidence that we are in fact able to multitask. Researchers found that attention can in fact, be split into two "spotlights”, one focusing on relevant objects and activities and one excluding objects of less relevance, like disturbances.
Although there surely are limitations to the number of objects and activities most humans can attend to simultaneously, the brain do have this ability.
It has been claimed for years that millennials (those born between 1981 and 1996) have been natural born multi-taskers. But what about the following generation?
If you thought millennials were easily distracted, always flipping between texts and emails, just wait until you start working with members of Gen Z (those born between 1995 and 2010). Gen Z are true digital natives and have always lived in a connected world with games and apps. They’re used to a constant stream of updates and impressions from the environment. Switching between different tasks and paying simultaneous attention to a wide range of stimuli comes naturally to them.
Using gamification to teach millennials and Gen Z new skills, like cyber security, is extremely efficient, as gamified learning bring in all those elements and techniques they both truly have learned to master!
So will Gen Z beat millennials at this? Millennials are said to be collaborative and teamwork oriented, while Gen Z are competitive, want to work on their own, and win. So perhaps it depends on the environment.
In IT and cybersecurity there’s a need for constant skill development in order to stay relevant and the ability to switch between activities, to combine work and skill development, may be a huge benefit. This is why we need new tools and new ways to learn, practice and drill.
And what better way than to gamify that whole process and tap in to the way the next generation learn best? Jump to our website and look for Project Ares and see how we think it could be done.
/Arn