Technology is the key to teaching future skills

FT

July 17, 2013 12:01 am

By Paul Taylor

When Barack Obama, the US president, last month announced a scheme to equip 99 per cent of pupils in state-run schools with improved broadband connectivity in an effort to boost educational attainment, he was underlining the fact that future generations need advanced technological skills to survive and prosper in the 21st century.

Such a focus ensures the business of IT in education is a concern of global proportions, but speedy internet connections are not the only requirement.

Many argue that education systems around the world are failing students, employers and society. The challenges include updating curriculums – which some feel do not meet the knowledge needs of young people – and low graduation and high dropout rates in many countries. In the US, for example, 46 per cent of college students fail to graduate within six years and teachers simply do not have the time to personalise the education experience and engage them more.

Employers are also worried. In a survey by the US-based Chronicle of Higher Education, half of respondents said they had trouble finding recent graduates qualified to fill positions – conclusions that have been echoed in surveys from around the world.

John Baker, chief executive of Desire2Learn, a provider of cloud-based learning tools, says: “While technology has been leveraged to automate simple tasks and for management productivity, it has not tackled the bigger issues of creating an engaging learning experience, improving overall outcomes and reducing dropout rates.

“Globally, we need to make the shift from a one-size-fits-all approach to education to learning systems that are intelligent, mobile, engaging and, most important of all, personal,” he adds.

Mr Baker’s experience is an example of how powerful digital learning can be. He formed his company in 1999 after identifying his own need for online learning while studying systems design engineering in Canada.

He is among an expanding group of entrepreneurs who believe that technology holds the key to resolving many of the problems facing education providers and institutions. They argue that education is on the brink of a digital revolution – one potentially as far reaching and disruptive as that which has already swept through other sectors such as media, entertainment and financial services.

The obvious signs of this revolution are the laptops, tablets and digital whiteboards widely available in lecture halls and classrooms in developed countries. The real innovation, however, is in the software and delivery of education services, and in the analytical tools that underpin it.

Chris Davia, chief technology officer of online education company ConnectEDU, says. “Schools need much more sophisticated tools than many use today to empower teachers to improve their instruction.

“As big data and predictive analytics technologies edge their way into [state-run] schools, administrators, teachers, parents and even students will be able to use data to evaluate better the progress and needs of learners,” he says.

Mr Davia and others say digitisation has the potential not just to democratise learning – providing low-cost, quality education directly for students wherever they are – but also to tailor learning to the individual needs of students from pre-school age, through school and college and into the workplace.

Underpinning these changes are technologies such as the web and broadband that provide the transport and delivery mechanisms for much of the new content. These include video, to support digital learning, together with social media and other tools that foster collaboration and feedback.

But perhaps the most powerful and transformative tools being applied to education are so-called adaptive learning, pioneered by companies such as New York-based Knewton, and predictive analytics, which turn data into insights that guide decision-making.

Predictive analytics can help teachers forecast student performance more accurately so that lessons can be more easily adapted to specific areas of need, rather than delivering a one-size-fits-all curriculum.

“By using data to evaluate students in real time and applying predictive algorithms, educators can drive more targeted curriculums. This should allow earlier interventions to ensure that students are on track to meet whatever measures of success exist,” says ConnectEDU’s Mr Davia.

Meanwhile, other technology start-ups, such as Coursera, which was founded by a group of Stanford University graduates to provide the technological underpinnings for massive open online courses, or Moocs, are shaking up the delivery of education in much the same way as the UK’s Open University – which effectively provided distance learning via television – did in the 1970s.

So far most Moocs, including those established by Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and other top universities, have focused on the higher education market, but that may change. Ten large US public universities and post-secondary systems have decided to join forces with Coursera in an effort to enhance the educational offering and bridge the gap between post-16 and higher education.

David Reynolds, an equity analyst with Jeffries, wrote in a recent note to investors: “While higher education is the focus for now, some partners [are] focusing efforts with Coursera directly at [students aged between five and 18], seeking to improve student readiness for higher education and consequently improve attainment.”

Anant Agarwal, a professor of electrical engineering and computer science at MIT and president of edX, and a leading provider of Moocs, told the Financial Times recently: “Online learning is going to be transformative. Traditional education is never going to be the same again. It has already changed.”

But not all education experts are convinced. “Cheerful claims that US higher education is undergoing an irresistible change driven by digital technology are unduly optimistic,” says the Hudson Institute, a Washington-based research organisation, in a report entitled Beyond Retrofitting: Innovation in Higher Education.

The authors, Andrew Kelly and Frederick Hess, accept that technology has the potential to transform higher education just as it has other knowledge-based sectors such as music, journalism and financial services, where new providers have unbundled goods and services, and improved access and convenience while reducing costs.

But they argue that technology does not guarantee innovation and that entrepreneurs must provide this drive.

However, such changes – and not just in higher education – may be slow to be implemented, as they demand the modernisation of educational systems in ways that may prove to be controversial, not least because they are likely to overthrow generations’ worth of received wisdom about how and what people need to learn.

Without the backing of those who design curriculums and run institutions around the world, the reforms needed by future generations in order to develop the useful workplace skills of tomorrow could still be a long time coming.