New Age of Education?

iniyavel (31)in #education • 7 years ago

Hi friends, this is my first ever post on Steemit after my introduction post last month.

I'm more or less reproducing my blog post from here:
https://reflectionsofafuturist.wordpress.com/2016/03/05/reforming-education/

I'll also add some more points and modifications to the above.

As the world population grows (estimated to be 10 billion by 2050), so does the need for more schools and universities. But is there an alternate way around this? Yes there is.

For instance, MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) platforms have paved the way for wider access of high quality content at a much lower cost for millions of students worldwide. There are plenty of platforms, for instance:

Of course, universities in every nation need to work with their best professors to bring out quality content as above. They can shoot videos of their lectures and upload them online, on YouTube, DTube or elsewhere. Now the telecom sector in every nation will need to expand their scopes to accommodate all students.

In case it's a separate website (or even YouTube for that regard), students can ask doubts, which can be handled by teaching assistants (TAs). And these doubts, if suitable, can be added to the FAQ section of each topic and compiled into a handout for other (and future) students to refer to. If there's a need for elaboration, let there be additional videos for addressing such doubts.

Lecture notes and handouts can also be placed online. Like in MIT's OCW.

As for enrollment, instead of 100 or 200 students for a program/year, at present, such platforms can accommodate 500 to 1,000 students at a minimum. Or even better, as mentioned here, using YouTube, it can also address millions of students worldwide.

Of course, each program must be priced based on their value in the domestic and international markets. For instance, if biotechnology (which is a rising trend) has more demand, it will be priced more. If something is going obsolete, like I believe IT(?), it will be priced less. Economics/Commerce will always be needed, so it will be priced accordingly. Ditto with arts, science, etc.

But what about universities that have no use now? We can convert them and use them for hands-on training on subject matters. In other words, making students industry ready. Let students do this 2-3 days a week while utilizing the other days to learn their subjects broadly and in-depth.

Or we can convert those universities and use them for other purposes apart from education, like defense, industry, transport, etc.

As for assignments/exams, let the professors decide how they will hold their exams for their courses. Whether it's online or offline is up to them. TAs will be needed for grading assignments/exams, but I believe that with the evolution of Machine Learning (ML) algorithms, even long answers in exams can be written by students and ML algorithms can make sense out of them and evaluate/grade them. If ML succeeds, even TAs will not be needed to evaluate/grade student assignments, except in some cases. For instance, practical examinations will need TAs. Let TAs handle that.

This is a placeholder post. As and when I get more ideas, I shall update this.

Since this is my first post, readers, please let me know if I made mistakes, so I can correct them appropriately!

Thank you all for reading. Have a great day.