Today’s dual enrollment students who, for the most part exist within a proliferation of technology are not necessarily the traditional students of yesteryear; they are Student 2.0 (those students who are typically born after 1993). The institution makes assumptions that dual enrollment and traditional community college students are the same people, but they are not. The institution must recognize their entering population as having already begun to develop critical composition skills, having redefined composition in their own terms, and needing to continue to compose both critically and interdisciplinarily. We cannot generalize who the open door student is, and an essential definition does not exist. An examination of the student must be both fluid and narrative. Too often higher education wants to force define these students on their terms and shut the open door rather than determine who is catered to in this model.

Goode (2010) elucidates the concept of technology identity as it relates to pedagogy, and by exploring the various philosophies and beliefs about the lived technological lives of our students, we can better try to understand these students from their approach, resulting in a narrowing of the perceived gap between the dual enrollment stigma and the linear, traditional pedagogical practices of the institution. Students’ technology identities are formed by not only the quality of their k-12 education but also by examining  "how holding, or not holding, a technology identity impacts an individual’s ongoing endeavors” (501). This situation of technology identity emerges from the sociological definition that considers culturally situated fluid experiences (Lave and Wenger, 1991; Foucault, 1975). Four key points identify the technology identity as “a framework to explore how formative experiences and social context influences skills and attitudes toward computing [technology]” (Goode, 498), that includes beliefs about one’s technology skills, opportunities and constraints of using tech, the importance of technology, and one’s own motivation to learn about technology.

2010 students enrolled in my sections.

Institutions profess intense interest in supporting these students (Hartman, Moskal & Dziuban, 2005) albeit generational shifts and historical perspective affect the stagnation with which the institution supports them. According to the Pew Internet and American Life Project, one in every five of today's students began using computers between the age of 5 and 6 and by the time those students were between the ages of 16 and 18 100% have used computers (Jones qtd. in Hartman, Moskal & Dziuban, 2005). While the students have changed, too many of the institutions have not. Twenty-first century wall-less pedagogy is still shoved into the 19th century brick and mortar walled rooms. Our discussions of what Student 2.0 really is needs to continue and speed up, and conversations between our institutional leaders, residential professors, adjunct instructors, and even the students themselves must educate and dissuade the fears associated with the gap.

Currently, we must ask if professors fear the dual enrollment model through a misunderstanding of this student generation while they themselves embrace the traditional nineteenth-century model. The lack of both Student 2.0 and the institution to budge in their own personal definitions of learning has caused a stalemate and continued gap between our dual enrollment students who are perceived as digital excessivists (see Keen, 2007; Selwyn, 2009). The paradigm shift is slowly seeping into the institution as this new generation graduates from high school and moves into these ill-prepared programs. Simply put, Student 2.0 is being taught by Professor 1.0. The open door model affords a quicker and earlier entrance into the institution and more and more students are taking those opportunities. In 2008 alone, almost 5,000 dual enrollment students enrolled in Rio Salado Community College's dual enrollment offerings (personal communication, D. Sweely, January,  27, 2011). The fear of these students is not because younger students are ill-prepared but because they have been differently prepared (e.g. less traditional written composition and more rhetorical media/multimodal composition).

Student 2.0, a dual enrolled student navigating technologies and the read write web as a fluid extension of their own educational paths, does not necessarily fit the traditional student mold, or student 1.0 if you will; this participatory student is a consumer of information engaged in the read write web. The institution does not need to shift to fit the outdated mold; the mold itself must change. Concerns of dual enrollment in the open door model revolve, in part, around the fear of colleges and professors that need to continue to reexamine their own on campus curriculum programs. Center's Internet & American Life Project.