The future of education is global, dynamic and in-sync with space and time triggered by unpredictable rapid changes that happen without interruption and notice, says Dr YP Kosta
Given our present situation, the future of education isn’t as dramatic nor so dark to predict. However, before we dive into the future, it is imperative to revisit how education has evolved over time.
Even before the transition into the industrial revolution, education has always been delivered within closed quarters. Initially, due to the lack of access to formalised schooling and higher education institutions, patriarchs transferred all knowledge and skills to their kin, while values and culture were delivered by religious figure heads.
To this effect, the family-sir-name evolved, attributed to the kind of work a family or a community did for a living. Thus, a social routine — a belief, culture, and value; was established.
Next came the Industrial Revolution— the age of mechanisation; involving machines, processes and men, advocating to work in a controlled environment, in a controlled way determined by the factory-settings. Industry reset the status quo as it demanded a fresh new outlook and skill-perspectives.
Industrial needs was the brainchild and revolutionised the concept of schools. With each key advancements toggling the reset button - from mass manufacturing to automation to the present data-revolution. Each of them have changed the way education is consumed and assimilated.
Integration of digital tech is just one amongst the many weaves that constitute the future-education-package. The future-education is global, dynamic and in-sync with space and time, involving complex predictability, triggered by unpredictable rapid changes that happen without interruption and notice.
Future-education-continuum will need to account for anticipation and adaptability implemented at scale with speed. Incorporating these two attributes is really going to be the corporate-view on education. For example, educational institutions which could anticipate and predict volatility due to COVID19 and implement a digital first transformation strategy are leading in terms of threat mitigation due to the following social distancing and lockdown measures.
We predict the present model of classroom style engagement and knowledge delivery will reset to the performing-theatre-stage-model configuration, powerfully networked and synced digitally with data and holographic projections wherein video led community interactions to enable seamless training, skilling, exposure and learning experiences.
Futuristically speaking, student and teachers' age-bar may vanish as there has been a huge impetus on lifelong learning. Teaching will continue to extend beyond classrooms and institutions globally. A complex combination of students and teachers belonging to multiple specialities at multiple levels jointly affect education delivery standards.
As the delivery of education is portioned, in terms of knowledge, skills, and behavioural-experiences, and the fact that not all can be best taught by an individual teacher nor within the premises of a fixed located classroom; the students will need to be exposed to a wide ranging mentor network to fulfil the total education-competency requirements. Thus teaching methodology is distributed and so are institutions, universities and teachers.
Heavy investments are now being considered to accelerate virtual classrooms aided by AR and VR tech which fulfils these needs. There is also a huge scope of developing AI assisted teaching assistants which will aid faculty to deliver educational content more effectively, thereby augmenting teaching methodology.
Social scientists and tech entrepreneurs also need to be roped-in so as to bring-in bilateral thinking, self and team management, and techno and economic-managerial concepts amongst learners and to sensitise them to the unique needs of the education sector and simulating genuine faculty-student relationships which are at the core of advancing an individuals learning outcomes.
Most universities will implement technological solutions to be deeply linked, networked and in sync to offer a more robust future and industry ready student, which considering current circumstances and uncertainty is required more than ever.
Universities will integrate and link with industries, research institutions and digital platforms to offer courses and programmes — offering in a phased wise flexible graduation timelines that happen through credit accumulation. Universities, industries and research institutions will jointly design and offer courses and programs and share human and other resources (labs, equipment and infra) to enable delivery.
The writer is Vice-chancellor, Marwadi University