Education: the big gap or the big opportunity?

Knowledge has become "the" economic and social resource. That idea was said as far as 1993 by Peter Drucker. Few paid attention to the implications of such an idea. It means that the economy and wealth lie in the "neuron development" rather than in capital, land or labor. The new trio is people, ICTs and Information. The output is knowledge.

What would the world's GDP be if everyone on Earth could work where most talented? And how would each one's lot be if that opportunity became true? Wouldn´t it be a wealthier world? Wouldn´t all people be happier? Wouldn´t the productivity and output of each one boost?

Though this looks an Uthopian idea, it can be reached. This is what I call the Age of Aquarius (http://onknowledgesociety.blogspot.com/2011/09/age-of-aquarius.html). What excites me most is that developing humankind talents becomes under this paradigm an economic issue: development and allocation of talent are key for the development of the economy as well as business. Issue that neither capitalism nor communism nor socialism nor any “isms” have been able to perform. Allowing “the flowers to flourish”, in Ken Robinson's words, by changing education paradigms and focusing on human talent development becomes then the logical way to produce not only the people who will be able to work in a Knowledge Economy, not only the people which this new world is needing, but above all, it will help each person reach its full talent potential. Education under this concept will cover a human being as a whole, since only a fully developed person can create the full value that his or her talents can produce. It is a huge change of mentality, which comprises all the dimensions of human beings.

Under this idea, education will look absolutely different from what it is today. The main role of schools and teachers will be to discover, unravel and develop the hidden talents of their students and put them to work. This is where ICTs will play a great help. Internet will be the backbone for instruction. It will take the entire job required in education that has to do with instruction, while school will take care of human development: learning how to learn, how to connect and work with other people, how to know yourself, how to project oneself, how to contribute to the community. Codependence of all human beings on other human beings will become more apparent than ever, and we will teach our children how to grow in that environment full of opportunities.

To make that happen we need children to learn three basic things and have access to a fourth. They need to understand, that is, comprehend what they read, see and listen to. They need to think, that is, select the information they need, process it and come out with something more valuable. And they need to explain, that is, express their output in such a way others may understand. The fourth element is the platform: the ecosystem where all have access to the same contents, tools and communication facilities. That is the Web and the Broad Band.

Different measuring of the three basic components in different countries show there is a big gap between developed and under developed countries as well as within the same countries between those who had access to good private schools and those who didn´t. Therefore, education as it is right now is socially discriminating and economically unable to optimize the talents present in the nation. Students should be thriving under the Knowledge Society paradigms with a knowledge-based education. That will become a necessity: an economic as well as a social one. Countries that develop and allocate their national talents will be the ones which will lead in the new society, and that should serve as a huge driver of change. Unfortunately, incumbent literal "leaders" of the world do not see this and are resilient to change their priorities.  It will then be the work of new leaders to make the changes, and it is the role of those who do see this to push the message forward, no matter how scarce the attention received. It has always been the same with truly disruptive ideas.

Alfredo Barriga

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

How will Education look like in 50 years' time?

Public Education was invented in the nineteenth century to produce the workforce needed by the industrial revolution, as brightly explained by Sir Ken Robinson:  

This model is no longer useful. As the Knowledge Society brings the Knowledge Economy, education must be able to help each person develop his or her particular talents and affinities, since talents produce knowledge, and knowledge is the resource. The education model based in standardized curricula and hierarchical learning methodology does not produce that each person develops its particular talents. I am afraid most people in the world actually do not work in what they like most and are most talented. And that, in terms of knowledge economy, is a monumental waste of resources.

The point is how can we generate an education model that can be personalized and yet scalable. Here’s a proposal.

Schools have two roles: instruction and formation. With instruction children learn things, with formation, they acquire habits and values. Learning is actually what gets the bigger part of the time spent at school. Habits and values are considered to be a consequence of learning. Why do we name “hard skills” those that come from instruction and “soft skills” those that come from values, if it is not that we praise more instruction than values? And, no time is spent at school in acknowledging the talents and affinities of each child.

The Internet is increasingly allowing instruction to be self-done.  Sugata Mitra has exprienced with children who teach each other using Online contents (http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/sugata_mitra_the_child_driven_education.html) . Roger Schank has experienced with "learning by doing online" (MBA Online, La Salle at http://www.beslasalle.net/portal/masters/masters-mba-mbaol-online).  Salman Khan (The Khan Academy, www.khanacademy.org/) has introduced an interesting new paradigm called “flipping the classroom”. Children in classrooms are instructed by the teacher and do homework at home. Khan makes it the other way.

The methodology consists in making students get instructed at home through the Web, with lessons uploaded to YouTube. This allows students to “rewind and play” the lesson as many times as they want, until they get it. Or, to comment with other fellow students through social networking until they get it. In the classroom is where “homework”, that is, the repeated application of the concepts learned, happens with a one-to-one computer approach. The teacher monitorizes who is doing well and who is not, and makes the advantageous student help the handicapped one. Plus, there is team work to discuss matters and present conclusions. This makes students learn, think, and apply what they learned. And get used to work as a team.

I think with this approach you don´t need classes to be as long as they are now, liberating time that can be devoted to the “soft skills” part. This is where the teacher becomes a mentor rather than a teacher, helping each student to discover his or her talents and affinities. With the information raised from flipping the classroom, each student can be guided to those subjects more related to his or her affinities and talents. With this, the students in most classes will share talent and affinity, making the class something thrilling and challenging to both students and teacher. Mentoring then can be specialized by affinities, with teachers related to the subjects where affinity is shared by the students, making creativity part of the methodology of teaching.

This will help students when confronting what professional career they want to follow.

In Knowledge Society professional training will become an ongoing activity. But, instead of packaging knowledge under a college or post graduate degree, the student will be able to choose what subjects he or she should follow in order to better develop talents and affinities. Universities will provide accreditation of subjects. A personalized curriculum will be able to be made by each person, structured and poured in job searching engines, making it possible to match jobs, talents and affinities. Therefore, jobs will be given to people most talented and related to the soft and hard skills needed for the job, in a worldwide job market searching for specific knowledge jobs.

With the “flipping the classroom” paradigm, the fragmentation of college and the universal access to the Internet, students will be able to attend classes anywhere in the world (limited only by language, which can also be learned Online), making education more competitive, innovative and cheaper.

I think that in 50 years' time the way people are educated, search for a job and develop their professional career will be totally changed. Less and less people will have a permanent job in an organization. More opportunities – and more uncertainty – will be available as the Knowledge Society and the Knowledge Economy evolves, focusing in intangible assets rather than tangible ones.

It took a lot of guts to our forefathers to produce and make possible the Public Education paid by with taxation to educate a huge amount of people which, up to then, had no access to education. It will also require a lot of guts to change the actual paradigms which are no longer suitable for the present Society and Economy, due to the fear of uncertain results and the lobby that will be raised by incumbent members of the Education sector which might see a threat in the new order of things. But that is just what happened two hundred years ago when Public Education came to place.

The bottom line is that the new paradigm will have to fulfill the needs of Knowledge Society, that is, that each person may work where he or she is most talented and likes best working at. Only then will knowledge create the maximum value it may reach, since knowledge is the product of people interacting with other people, with nature and with things created by people.

Alfredo Barriga