Information technology (IT) is reforming many industries, one of them is education. Education is often referred to as one of the basic needs of human beings. So it would be a big step if education could be made more effective with the use of IT. In this blog I want to talk about two of the opportunities IT brings within the field of education.
The first opportunity is the personalisation of the education experience. IT makes it possible to adjust education to the personal needs of the students. We can for example think of the pace with which information is introduced to the student or the form in which new material is showed. Blended learning is a trend which combines technology with face-to-face interaction. The student is allowed to make their own decisions about direction and pace. Adaptive learning is largely similar to blended learning, but it goes one step further. It also modifies the presentation of material in response to the student’s performance.
Another opportunity IT brings is the automated teacher. Anthony Seldon, a British education expert, said that robots will replace teachers by 2027. This is a very attractive opportunity, because of the shortage in qualified teachers. But there is a lot of criticism to this opportunity. Critical people state we first have to look at the role of a teacher. A teacher does more than just the one-way task of instructing a student. Teachers perform tasks a robot is not able to. Examples are identifying social cues or roadblocks, often personal or emotional in nature, taking on a caring role in a parent’s stead and advocate for students which might otherwise be forgotten. They state that we should focus on building technology that aid teachers in these tasks, instead of building technology that replaces the teacher. With regard to this opportunity the future has to indicate if robots can be developed to the extend they can perform the mentioned tasks as well.
Sources
- https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2018/03/28/cutting-edge-education-13-ways-to-leverage-technology-for-learning/#53a0facc3919
- https://fedena.com/blog/2015/05/technology-in-schools-what-are-the-opportunities-and-challenges.html
- https://fedena.com/blog/2018/05/teachers-vs-technology-can-technology-replace-teachers.html
- https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/12/why-robots-could-replace-teachers-as-soon-as-2027
- http://blog.screenbeam.com/2018/01/17/6-digital-transformation-trends-edu/
Thank you for your interesting blog, Erica! I was attracted to it by the title since I did not come across this subject (eduction & IT) very often. So, it was refreshing to hear what IT could actually bring into the education industry.
Personally, I aso think that IT can boost our eduction level. Nowadays, it provides opportunity to people to learn things they have always wanted to learn about but did not get the chance to, such as online courses.
However, I can hardly imagine that robots will replace teacher by 2027 because, unlike teachers, robots lack emotions. Apart from supervising students, teachers can also establish a bond with students in which they consult each other and chats about what they did in their weekends. Another thing to consider is when bulling happens at school. So, I agree with the majority that IT should only support teachers in their tasks but not to replace them.