Why the education sector is ripe for digital disruption

• Article 2 of 2
• I Magazine, January 2015
• View the original article online

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The last technological disruption in teaching happened more than 500 years ago. Until then, the role of the 'lecturer' had been clear -- the word's source being the Latin lectura, meaning to 'read.' With books scarce and literacy even rarer, the lecturer educated others simply by reading from a book.

Gutenberg's printing press transformed the mechanics of education. As books became more common and literacy increased, the original need for lecturers disappeared and instead, the teaching process was transformed into the dissemination of a much wider set of knowledge in a much more collaborative way.

In the half millennium since, the educator's role has remained more or less the same: teach a lesson, give out assignments, test to see if the student has understood what they've heard or written down. But is that really still enough?

While other industries have been disrupted and radically enhanced by the application of advanced digital technologies in recent decades, education processes and structures have barely changed. And that has led a broad group of observers to predict that the education sector is ripe for digital transformation.

Imperative for change
Certainly CIOs in industries around the world think that change well overdue. The picture they often paint is of an education sector failing to provide people with the skills their organizations need. With technology now underpinning virtually every sector, ultimately, it's the quality of the people applying and leveraging that technology that will determine whether projects -- and even companies and government agencies -- succeed.

"Skills are the things that drive profitability," says David Lister, global CIO of UK electricity network provider National Grid and a member of the CIO board of e-skills UK, a partnership between industry and the UK government designed to ensure that Britain has the necessary IT skills for economic growth. "But if you look at the figures, such as the number of people coming out of universities with a technology degree, 12% remain unemployed six months after graduation, which is twice the level of the student population as a whole. So there's a disconnect between what industry wants and what's coming out of some universities."

Tom Reilly, VP of learning at IT industry association CompTIA, sees a similar situation in the US. "Education is producing students to meet state and government guidelines, and it does a decent job of meeting that. The bigger issue is that it's not producing people to take on jobs, particularly in IT."

Two root causes -- at least at university level -- are the shortage of educators with the necessary skills in both teaching and the domains being taught; and the time it takes a student to learn and understand a subject in sufficient depth and breadth to be able to use it in practice.

Here, digital technology is already providing solutions that have the potential to revolutionize tertiary education -- at least if adopted widely enough. And it is, again, the role of the lecturer that will mostly be changed.

Education on demand
Distance learning platforms, virtual learning environments (VLE), learning management systems and massive online open courses (MOOCs) are all ways of allowing that scarce resource -- the domain expert with good teaching skills -- to deliver teaching to a class over the Internet in an engaging, multimedia fashion. No longer do students necessarily have to be in the classroom; instead, they can watch video streams of lectures whenever and wherever they happen to be. The platforms enable them to interact with other students and instructors, download extra materials, upload completed assignments and more.

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