Fifty years ahead in education starts now!

In my last post of Nov. 15, 2011, I wrote about how education could look in fifty years time. The main ideas there were four:

• Education will be personalized according to talents and affinities for each student
• This personalization will take place through a defragmentation of the actual curricula
• This personalization will mean assigning different roles from those they have now to Universities, teachers and students
• All this is technically possible thanks to the Internet

Today I come across the great news of the new platform to be launched by MIT called MIT.x(http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesmarshallcrotty/2011/12/21/m-i-t-game-changer-free-online-education-for-all/)

It is not exactly my idea of how it will turn out to be, but I find in it a new paradigm that goes on the right direction:

1. students will be able to control which classes will be available on the system, and therefore will create a personalized education system
2. students may interact with other students in order to learn what they are being taught on their own
3. although M.I.T. will not give a degree, students able to show mastery of the subjects taught will receive an official certificate on completion. They will be charged an affordable amount for the credential

Some comments on this article say that online experience will never be better than face experience on a real campus. I think that is what we might be seeing now, but we are yet not able to really figure out how that will look in the future. What is certain is that online campus is different from offline campus. Whether that means students in the former are better prepared than students in the latter, is yet to be found. And even if it comes out that face classes are better than online, Knowledge Society will be richer nonetheless with both of them coexisting, since millions of people will have the choice of attending the best qualified classes with the best contents in the world. And clearly, online will be more cheap and affordable than the physical campus model.

I like it better that way. In time, I believe the system will evolve into a Business Model in which:

1. Professors will be able to upload their assignments Online, using methodologies such as the one Khan Academy is actually using or MIT is planning to use. Access may be for free or at a small charge, depending on the professor's fame and authory. They will be able to do it on their own or within a University platform, or as freelancers for more than one University. This will follow the same Business Model we are now having in e-books, with the author, the distributor and the reader each in its role, only this time the contents deal with learning. This could be labeled as "level 1" of the Busines Model of Graduate and Post-Graduate Education
2. Universities will be the "certifiers" of assignments taken, just as the Model proposed by M.I.T. is, therefore with an affordable charge. This could be labeled as "level 2" of the Business Model of Graduate and Post-Graduate Education. It does not mean an Academic Degree, but it will add to the curriculae of any professional, since in Knowledge Society learning will be a permanent task.
3. Universities will be able to give an Academic Degree for students that have several assignments certified as in level 2, according to criteria formulated both by Academy and Industry alike, according to the needs of the work market. This degrees will be paid for, but the final cost will be lower than today´s with the "tangible campus" Model
4. Universities will still have physical campus classes, if it proves to be better than virtual campus, at a higher cost. The education market will take care of that in the end

So I see more and better education for all, because all will have the opportunity to access the contents, methodologies, universities and professors of their choice, and bigger competition leads to better quality and lower prices. Plus, I foresee online platforms giving the service of managing accreditation certificates and making job matching according to each person. With this, the Knowledge Society will boost.

So, it may still be 50 years away to get there, but at least I think for sure that is where we are going.

Get ready

Alfredo Barriga