According to Futurist Thomas Frey, a radical shift is occurring in education right now. We are headed for new territories to deal with the exponential growth of information available today. Students are still going to be expected to learn the three pillars of literacy: reading, writing and arithmetic. But modern curricula are taught in an old system of learning that does not meet the needs of today. Frey states, “The education system of the future will undergo a transition from a heavy emphasis on teaching to a heavy emphasis on learning. Experts will create the courseware and the students will learn anytime, anywhere at a pace that is comfortable for them, learning about topics that they are interested in.”
Open Courseware is free software designed to be used in an online educational program. Remember the old beta/vcr wars for creating an industry standard? Well, entrepreneurial educators are fighting it out right now to create a standard courseware architecture for presentation and assessment. Frey says sooner or later one platform will emerge as the industry leader per market forces.
A Little History
The OEM, Open Education Movement, actually started before computers. Think of 4-H Clubs. Kids learned what they wanted to learn on their own schedules. Scouts picked what badge they wanted to work on and found mentors. According to Wikipedia, “Open education is motivated by a belief that learners want to exercise agency in their studies…to have a hands-on educational experience instead of a strictly textbook-focused education, to take responsibility for their educational decisions, to experience the emotional and physical side of education, to understand how education and community are related, and to have personal choice in the focus of their classroom studies.” Open courseware are informal lessons created at universities and published for free on the internet.
Where can You Find Such “Lessons?”
MIT established their extraordinary open courseware project (ocw.mit.edu) in 2001. Their initiative has been to put all the educational materials from its undergraduate and graduate level courses online, freely available to anyone, anywhere. Wow! They have been followed by over 250 other universities and educational institutions.
edX (ocw.mit.edu/) is a MOOC…massive open online course. People from anywhere, all over the world, can sign on. You may audit their courses for free, or pay a fee for a verified certificate of completion, which will count as true academic credit. There are lots of private MOOC’s like Prager University or Oprah’s Lifeclasses.
What About Labwork?
Bridges Charter School in Thousand Oaks is a hybrid of home schooling and the classroom access needed for science and the arts. Maker spaces are popping up all over. A makerspace is a collaborative work space inside a school, library or separate public/private facility for making, learning, exploring and sharing. There are mobile classrooms. Electronics students have virtual labs in which they can build circuits. Medicine? Students can practice virtual surgery.
How Fast Will The Changes Occur?
It is this writer’s opinion that the changes will not come as fast as predicted. It’s not that the technology is not ready. It’s more than ready. It’s the social issues around these changes that are going to have to be confronted. Brick and mortar schools are more than places of education. They serve as day care for children whose parents are working and include early/late drop off/pickup. Look on social media at this time of year and see the desperation of parents seeking summer camps with early drop offs and late pickup. Did you know that families spend up to 26% of their income on child care these days? So that’s a big obstacle.
Secondly, “sage from the stage” teaching is not going to go quietly. Teachers’ unions have a lot of power, and they will not give that power up easily. Professional educators want to be compensated for the curricula they write. OEM gives courseware away free.
Third, brick and mortar schools will lose a lot of funding because of online education. Schools get paid by the state based on attendance–that’s why they have all those “perfect attendance” awards. How will schools be financed in the future?
And Then There Is SEL
SEL is social and emotional learning where students learn self-management, empathy and relationship skills. You don’t learn these skills online. The new Flip Classroom, where students learn material at home online and then come in to the classroom for practical application of that learning, seeks to add balance to the learning process.
You know what this comes down to? The love of parents for their children. The future of education is going to be driven by people wanting the best and most current for their children. Stay at home parents will be building the future right alongside professional educators. Working parents will force social issues to be confronted. And…it’s going to be messy…as change often is.
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