It is said that access to education brings equal opportunity. Back in the day, one had to travel miles and miles to get a good education. Now, with digital transformation disrupting the education industry with Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) and Online Learning, the world’s best professors are in the palm of your hands. The potential this represents to uplift sections of society, to penetrate into the most rural areas and provide its inhabitants access to the world’s cutting edge knowledge, is massive.
Blended Learning & Flipping the Classroom
In 2004, when Salman Khan created maths lessons on Yahoo doodles, he had only one intention: to teach his cousin over the internet. When word got around, he decided to upload the videos on YouTube and scores of students across America began using the videos which led him to found the non-profit Khan Academy. Today, Khan Academy has over a billion videos, has 40 million students and is an international phenomenon. It has popularized the concept of a flipped classroom, where the classroom structure is inverted. Much of the course materials are provided online or in a digital format and students study at their own pace. In the classroom, learning is more focussed and is used for problem-solving, group work and one-on-one mentoring.
Flipped classrooms will change the role of the teacher and student. It gives student the power to explore and follow their interests, while teachers adopt the role of the ‘guide-on-the-side.’ You can read the story of how a fifth grade teacher in California has integrated Khan Academy’s lesson into her curriculum. And the result: Only 3% of her students were marked as average or below in the annual tests, down from 13% at the mid-terms.
Revolutionizing the way corporates train
MOOCs and Online Learning Platforms are having a significant impact in the corporate learning and development programs. HR and L&D heads are re-thinking the ways their resources need to be trained, especially with digital transformation making most of the existing roles obsolete. Employees need to constantly learn and upskill themselves to match emerging job responsibilities. MOOCs have enabled companies such as Google and Yahoo to smoothly onboard new employees and to upskill existing employees acquire new skills. The corporate e-learning market is expected to reach about $31 billion by 2020 growing at a rate of CAGR of 11%. Course providers such as Lynda.com, Coursera and Edx are emerging platforms with the primary aim of helping individuals advance their careers. While some of the courses are free, there are different models from subscription-based access to pay-per-course. The 2016 Brandon Hall Group survey reveals that corporate KPIs showed a strong tendency to improve, on average, over 10% in terms of revenue for 43% of the companies surveyed and in terms of productivity for 53% of the companies surveyed.
Big Data and Predictive Analytics
The possibility of combining blended learning concepts (such as the flipped classroom) with big data analytics and predictive analytical tools has immense possibilities. Edtech companies and schools are not oblivious to this growing phenomenon. Knewton is a startup that has built an adaptive engine which can sift through tons of data to deliver personalised content and courses, specifically suited to the learning needs and abilities of each student. Knewton has partnered with Pearson to integrate their adaptive engine to Pearson’s courses. As Knewton looks to access Pearson’s database of over 9 million students, it hopes to identify how students respond to different course content and deliver personalized recommendations.
Big Data and predictive analysis will play a large role in reducing student dropout rates. It can also predict chances of students dropping out and providing remedial measures as in the case of this high school in Tulsa, Oklahoma which raised its graduation rate from 53% to 75% in three years using a data-driven approach. When you consider that the average dropout costs the taxpayers close to $300,000 over their lifetime, and that nearly 80% of the incarcerated are high school dropouts, there lies tremendous potential for schools and colleges in this area.
Mobile Learning for Social Empowerment
One of the emerging areas of technology growth has been in offering mobility solutions through learning apps. This has immense potential to uplift people in rural areas where access to infrastructure of quality teachers are constrained. Eneza Education is a for-profit company that is pursuing its mission of helping 50 million students in Africa to become smarter. They do this by delivering educational lessons and quizzes on mobile phones through SMS. Eneza has over a million users and users can access courses for as less as 10 cents per week. The primary focus on delivering content through SMS is to ensure it is accessible to all, even those who do not have expensive smartphones or live in rural areas which have inadequate coverage. Projects like these can be implemented across developing nations, helping them leapfrog in to the future. Mobile learning will play a large role in delivering content, keeping track of student’s progress and offering guidance and counselling.
What does the future hold?
Edtech is an exciting space to be in. Novel ideas of creating and delivering personalised content on a global scale can democratize the education system, creating equal opportunity for all. The opportunities that analytics bring with it can create adaptive and dynamic courses, closely matching the needs and speeds of the students. But the edtech space is not just for schools and graduates. Companies too will need to embrace the concept of MOOCs and Online learning to prepare their employees for a digital future.
