Nowadays, technology can be found everywhere. Most millennials and Generation Z are interacting more digitally than in real-life (Sulleyman, 2017). The President of Carnegie Mellon University, Farnam Jahanian, believes that the education system needs to evolve accordingly. He states that “the unprecedented pace of societal change makes the need for reform more urgent. There is great pressure on higher education as the engine of progress in a knowledge-based economy” (Carnegie Mellon University, 2019).
The skills that are needed today to successfully execute most jobs are likely to change on average by 42% (World Economic Forum, 2019). Currently, companies are determining which skills will be required to maintain their competitive advantage in this technologically developing world. Universities should act upon this knowledge to ensure their students – and thereby the approaching global workforce – are fully prepared for this change in necessary skills and competences. According to Leah Belsky (2019), universities should ensure online offerings that could establish partnerships with other content providers or universities. By taking advantage of the possibilities due to emerging technologies, universities can help many students without being limited to the physical location of the university.
Online learning ensures growing access to university programs as it is flexible and affordable (Belksy, 2019). Moreover, due to online learning, students are able to engage in less extensive courses before undertaking a larger program. With formats that are technology-driven or even AI-powered, students could decide to pause their course for a moment or they could decide to finish their course more rapidly. Furthermore, online courses could be more personalized which establishes more effective outcomes for students (Belksy, 2019). Therefore I believe, consistent with Leah Belsky, that online learning should be stimulated in universities.
Susan Dynarski (2018) of The New York Times argues that online courses harm students that are less proficient, as online learning requires more self-regulation, organization, and self-motivation.
Online learning is nevertheless still in its early stages and has great potential to disrupt the traditional education system provided that it takes its challenges into account aswell.
What do you think of online learning? Should it be implemented in the educational system?
Belksy, L. (2019). Where Online Learning Goes Next. [online] Harvard Business Review. Available at: https://hbr.org/2019/10/where-online-learning-goes-next [Accessed 6 Oct. 2019].
Carnegie Mellon University (2019). The Future of Higher Education in the Age of Disruption. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFP2S2f3io4 [Accessed 6 Oct. 2019].
Dynarski, S. (2018). Online Courses Are Harming the Students Who Need the Most Help. [online] Nytimes.com. Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/19/business/online-courses-are-harming-the-students-who-need-the-most-help.html [Accessed 6 Oct. 2019].
Sulleyman, A. (2017). Millennials interact more through phones and apps than in real life, report finds. [online] The Independent. Available at: https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/millennials-generation-z-smartphone-habits-apps-communications-real-life-a8008641.html [Accessed 6 Oct. 2019].
World Economic Forum (2019). Strategies for the New Economy. Skills as the Currency of the Labour Market. 1st ed. Geneva.
Thanks for the read! I think that online learning is something inevitable! There’s an ever increasing amount of knowledge and the internet has really opened up the floodgates in ways of access; whether it’s online lectures or podcasts, virtual or augmented reality experiences, interactive gamification of complex material, I think this is the future.
One of the amazing things you highlighted here, is how flexible it is. In Kenya for instance, there has been rapid technological breakthrough when i look at all the amount of people that have acces to the internet – this has opened access to the worlds best online libraries and universities. I think that there are entire nations that can benefit from all these applications as they don’t have local access to a lot. However one simple smartphone with internet access opens up this rich resource of content.
I think that online education should be consistently more inserted into traditional frameworks, however it is going to be challenging in this way to certify people. Then the fact that many universities, in a way, also operate like a business, it might be challenging in terms of distribution – however I think Edx for instance has made huge strides!
Personally, I believe that one of the main benefits of online education is that it is democratizing. More specifically, people in developing countries will be allowed to receive education which is of relatively similar high quality to (offline) education in developed countries. These countries generally cope with problems such as poverty, bad health infrastructures and corruption which requires long-term investments to counteract. Online education is a very promising and low-cost solution in this case. Though, this requires that three main structural barriers which prevent students in developing countries from accessing online courses are tackled firstly: technology and internet connectivity, language barriers and the cultural relevance of the coursework.
There’s huge possibilities in the digitization of education indeed! I know that our own university is looking into learning analytics as well. Other universities are already starting to use AI powered systems to offer virtual mentors to their students. They use it, for example, for freshmen students that would otherwise have to take extra math classes. This also saves a lot of costs, namely 6.7 billion dollars annually, as stated by Faggella (2019). I think it won’t disrupt the current education market yet, as education still relies on human-to-human interactions, which cannot be replicated by AI yet. It still has a long way to go in my opinion, but Universities should definitely prepare for it.
Faggella (2019). Examples of Artificial Intelligence in Education. [Online] Available from: https://emerj.com/ai-sector-overviews/examples-of-artificial-intelligence-in-education/