Education in 2050
Higher education will take a leap in the next 30 years! Here is my personal take which is based trend that I have been observing in the higher education space in collaboration to technology and society.
By 2050, maximum student population will be pursuing degree via online programme, education will be democratised and globalised in its true sense unhindered by geographical boundaries, social status or age coupled with technology in terms of superfast computing and communicating networks, there will be major role of virtual reality and augmented reality technologies take the front seat and will prove to be a better experience than compared to the on-campus classes.
With the present updates on the bankruptcies, mergers that is happening in the industry there will also be lesser education institutes, also due to the lesser demand for courses being done in the old fashioned, due to rise in the fees and aggressive switch onto online learning, students at the campus will decrease and so will be the drop in the teachers.
The working model of these institutes will also change, majority of the staff will have jobs like marketing, planning, human resources finance, and lesser quantity of academicians who will be responsible for loading and maintaining online modules and may be face to face lectures, tutorials once in a while, we will be seeing robots take charge who will be super intelligent. These robot’s will prepare courseware, give lecturers, answer doubts, create assignment including providing of feedback to the student in the generation, being robots which are intelligent it will also be ease to scan and detect copy paste materials (Plagiarism) and those got done thru various app and software, the robots may even help research, conduct investigation and write articles.
The robots will work tirelessly without seeking payments and would soon displace human being. Going by that lesser students will opt for a face to face – on campus courses and thus lesser staff being employed will indirectly increase the cost of education at the campus, there will be no need of large space and building as the schools and college of this day exists, these space will be converted into office blocks, apartments and hotels, the size of campus will shrink.
To share, a insight Arizona State University launched an online Biology Degree course in partnership with Google in 2018, Labster, a company specialising in designing virtual science lab was also partner to this, here student not only does get blood samples of people but also manipulate DNA, which otherwise is mere a dream.
Few other aspects that will form the part of Education in 2050 will be like
1. Home Schooling: Will help student to study what they want, when they want, and for how long they want keeping them with their families. As on date 2 million students are home schooled in US.
2. Personalized Learning: Individual, self-paced learning curriculum, and an environment that will be in line with the students need coupled with technologies enriching learning potential and creativity, study reveals that student have improved academic performance when technology is integrated into learning.
3.More e-learning platforms: With the technology in place, there will be a significant shift towards online learning, incorporated with virtual reality, will help negotiate & exchange ideas, further making it interesting and affordable. Study reveals 71% of the student feel virtual learning provides greater flexibility and freedom.
4.No Campuses: All the campus that we see today may not existing, learning will be purely virtual, while we may have laboratories, to conduct some assignments, will see an era of travelling classrooms, will help move them closure to nature having good amount of time to spend outside classroom. Study have revealed improvement in the mental health and well-being of students participating in practical activity
5. Project based learning: Games and toys that help learn better will be the order of the day and will facilitate the teaching and learning process making it creative, practical and enjoyable. This will elevate the thinking process and problem solving abilities, study reveals 96% of teachers agree technology and project based learning enhances motivation for learning amongst the students.
6. Teacher: They will now, not only remain the one who passes knowledge, but also will have a larger and crucial role to play in terms of identifying students strength, values and their core interest, coupled with onus to guide them for innovation, facilitate way of thinking & learning
With the future work place in need of the qualities like creativity, communication, collaboration and problem solving expertise, as part of the job requirement to thrive in careers, this skills and emotions are build thorough discussions, group work co-operation, extra-curricular activities like those of sports and music also helps quicker skill attainment which needs to the imparted. Learning no more will be a first 20 years devotion which it is presently, it will be more about informal learning adaptable for people of all ages.
Education in the future will be more experimental and stress will be deployed to make the student being able to gain skill sets which would help them gain employment and technology will help them have control on what and how to learn, where teachers will be more of mentors than being tester’s.