Robert Preston from InformationWeek, wrote in one of his articles about the 21st century education system that is ripe for disruption. I agreed with him and I supported his reasoning with some of my own. Let me elaborate few of those here.
The education that is being offered at universities in a so-called traditional method is coming to its dreadful end as we hear more news like the ones you heard from me in my previous blog. That kind of reforms that a traditional education system is going through is not a reform at all in my opinion. It is futile to dress up a dead wood with more decorative ornaments to make it appealing. It is better instead to see what is there in the horizon and go for it with a full commitment than to get struck in doldrums between a traditional education system and an evolutionary one.
You may wonder why I am saying this and where am I coming from. I say the form of education that existed in the 20th century served well the needs of the 20th century, but it is not going to do a whole lot good for the 21st century. I see that the disruption to that system of teaching is not coming from one direction but several.
It took roots, way back in time, in the form of recorded lectures that were made available to students from inside the college libraries providing excellent support to re-learning aspects of education. With the advent of Internet the knowledge-base grew and the Internet was put into excellent use to connect intellects around the globe to provide enriched form of knowledge on any subject under the sun at any time and from anywhere. Of course, it also created silos due to deep research that ensued, but opened up possibilities to acquire knowledge from different sources other than the traditional classroom activities and from the glorious buildings which housed materials such as books, tapes, CDs and DVDs and called themselves libraries.
However, it soon led to libraries of all kinds and knowledge databases of all kinds on the Internet to diminish the need for the physical structures that existed in the 20th century to acquire education in the 21st century. With the advent of ebooks and e-learning and online universities, the emphasis placed on acquiring education through the traditional methods within the four walls of classrooms diminished.
Every education acquired can be and will be and should be put use to create a better world than that existed before. Of course, we know very well that knowledge is power, instead of using it, many abused it. The 21st century problems that we face today regarding security of individuals, societies and nations and in fact the world can be attributed to this connected world and the shared information. We hear about viruses, worms, botnets and so on and so forth plaguing the wonderful world of information sharing on a daily basis. If it had been just the information sharing we would have been OK. I think we are having this problem blown out of proportion because of the e-commerce that came into existence as a byproduct of information sharing capabilities of the internet.
Looking at the bright side and limiting ourselves to the forms of education that is fueling the disruptive forces, consider what ‘YouTube’ and powerful ‘search engines’ are doing. With YouTube concept, grew www.khanacademy.org to provide excellent resources to basic maths, science and reading subjects. The videos are short like you-tube videos, the subjects are many and are easily accessible by anyone around the globe. With powerful search engines, we can locate information we need within a matter of seconds. This kind of free-education and ease with which we can get the information will continue fueled by the open-source mentality of many geeks around the world and will continue to disrupt the traditional forms of education. We all know that these freebies will not lost for too long as it is well-known that many hungry sharks gobble up such offerings to re-offer them with a price-tag attached.
Whatever may be the case, it is going to offer excellent forms of education that is relevant and at a reasonable cost and useful to many who are already connected in many different ways through the plethora of electronic gadgets that are now available in the market. With that the traditional classrooms are not anymore limited to four walls, but got expanded to four-quadrants of COL that I am a proponent of.
This brings us to the question of the usefulness of the 20th century universities for the 21st century. I think the best way for them to survive is to take on the roles that is ripe for the 21st century education. Many such roles will be under B-quadrant (benchmark and begin) and to some extent under D-quadrant(do and discover). Instead of wasting tuition fees on lectures that can be made available through electronic media, why not use the same money if possible to build excellent research laboratories to bring down the costs of medicines that are reaching astronomical prices? Why not bring down the cost of health, bring down the cost of energy that is consumed more but available less? Think of ways in which the earth can be made greener, safer and a pleasurable habitat for mankind rather than to fuel the growth of ugly, dirty and filthy dumping of non-recyclable materials.
This is where I think the traditional universities can buzz. It will acquire a real meaning as a place for higher learning and education than continuing to exist providing the run-of-the-mill degrees and certificates that add no value.
So what-if….
We leverage the disruptive forces than to curb them; we manage the inside chaos to make way to newer possibilities; we look towards the possibilities offered by four-quadrant learning; and, we create a 21st century as a new millenia where the possibilities were converted to realities through the help from COL.
then I think….
We have achieved what we can as intelligent human beings working towards the overall safe-keeping of what this world can offer in its diversity through the learning that only we as human beings can aspire to acquire, privileged to get, and, destined to deliver.