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The future of learning is open

This post is also available on LinkedIn here.

Last week, I attended the Future of Learning Conference 2019 organized by Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore and Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay. It is an annual event to review, provoke and align to evolve a collective vision of what the future of learning needs to be. For me, this was also an opportunity to thank a lot of people especially from NPTEL, edX, IITBombayX, IIMBx and SWAYAM who have been and are at the forefront as India defines a promising future of learning. In this post, I have highlighted my 3 key takeaways and how these align to my personal beliefs.

Why do we have admissions?

This was the first question asked by the keynote speaker, Anant Agarwal, an MIT professor and CEO of edX. Access to quality education is a right, he reiterated.

I think, education is the only industry today perhaps, which selects its customers and this has implications on the nature of competition and in turn, quality of services offered, operational efficiency and value creation. I have discussed how educational technology can help us make this industry customer centric again in a separate post here.

When do we apply what we learn?

Das Narayandas, Senior Associate Dean of Harvard Business Publishing mentioned that education industry has been predominantly using a far transfer model, where students apply what was learnt in a degree program at different stages of their career. He highlighted that it is now possible to deliver a near transfer model where lifelong learners would mostly learn what they need to apply on demand.

I believe, unbundling of degree programs that started with micro-credentials would continue at a rapid pace. As focus shifts to lifelong learning, stacked credentials would help learners have shorter learn and apply cycles. On pricing front though, bundled pricing would continue to dominate, till trust deficit associated with digital learning is tackled, which I have addressed in a separate post here.

How do we create transcripts that support lifelong learning?

Tom Robinson, CEO of AACSB International highlighted that how we manage transcripts would have to change to support lifelong learning. What happens to your corporate learning transcripts when you leave an organization, he asked. He also mentioned that though LinkedIn does have skill records, it is not verified.

I believe that open access to quality education shall make this world a better place to live. I’m grateful that these key highlights from the conference indicate that this is where we all are heading. Access to educational resources opened by the best in the world for last 11 years has made me who am I today and would continue to define me in future. I also had the privilege of being associated with Nanyang Technological University, which opened the doors of professional opportunities for me. Not every learner is privileged and that is why the future of learning is open.

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EdTech 101 Series : Inversion of selection

Imagine, you have a product or a service to sell. Would you select your customers or your customers would select your product or service? Employers select their employees because employees offer a service and employers are customers. Now, when this selection is outsourced to universities, it creates a situation where as service providers, universities have the power to select students who are in fact their customers.

Education is the only industry today perhaps, which selects its customers. This has implications on the nature of competition and in turn, quality of services offered, operational efficiency and value creation. I believe, educational technology has a potential to invert this and make this industry customer centric again.

Traditionally, universities have had constrained reach due to limited availability of physical resources for matching supply with multi-fold demand. Using technology, MOOC platform providers like edX, Coursera and Udacity have offered universities a solution to enhance their constrained reach and even provide open access to a set of services to anyone, anywhere and anytime.

Especially, a business model, that edX follows, of making courses available for free and provide verified certificates for a fee, with optional on-campus modules that use a selection process, when becomes mainstream, shall help catalyze inversion of selection in education. Free market forces would then apply and would lead to a rapid digital transformation with enhanced customer centricity.

There are challenges that prevent the edX model from being mainstream. Due to which, Coursera and Udacity who started with a similar model have had to partially deviate from it. I have addressed those in a separate post here. What do you think about the inversion of selection in education? Let me know.

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EdTech 101 Series : Why don’t you teach that!

In this series, EdTech 101, using the most basic form of educational technology, which is web based text publishing, I hope to highlight some simple ideas about how each and everyone of us can make use of technology to enable open access to quality education.

This first post is about something that you really do well, it may be anything – painting, project management, software designing or story telling to name a few. Someone may have even casually said to you – why don’t you teach that! I believe, each and every one of us should teach something that we like to do or care about. Take a moment to think about what is it that you can share to make someone, you don’t even know, feel positive and thankful.

You may or may not use technology to do this. You can just start offline with your friends or family and then gradually figure out a way to make it available to masses using technology. However, the situation today, with internet and especially social media, is that, how to publish is not a problem any more – all you need is a browser and an internet connection. You can #TeachWithATweet and you can reach @anyone.

Obviously, there’s Wikipedia, but it has struggled to get more and more people to contribute due to the missing social aspect. I have myself tried to convince people to create content online, but then I always found that there’s lack of incentive and motivation. There are some who create content of some form or the other (blog post, tweets, articles, videos and even courses) without looking for an incentive, but it is also fair that many look for one instead. Twitter, Facebook and now even more effectively, LinkedIn Publishing brings that incentive for us to create and publish content.

On such web publishing platforms, you can not only make your experiences, opinions and research, accessible to others, but also strengthen your social presence through improved network interaction, keywords search index and unique content portfolio.

These platforms are increasingly being used in digital learning as well as blended classrooms to improve participation as well as to make use of the fact that we learn the most when we teach.

Here are a few tips for creating content on the web.

  • Just like this post, keep it short and byte-sized.
  • Make it a series, if you want to move deeper or lateral with the topic.

Both of these are well-researched and commonly used techniques in digital learning and also address short attention spans that are observed on social media.

  • Do think about why, before thinking about how to convey your message.
  • Make use of # and @ tags, if you’re creating short content and special tags field for a medium content format like this post.
  • Stay in touch and make it a habit.

That’s about the first post of EdTech 101 Series. How can we encourage more professionals to teach, at-least via web publishing? Let me know.