Why the education sector is ripe for digital disruption
- Article 2 of 2
- I Magazine, January 2015
Even as the digital era is reshaping industries of all kinds, the processes and structures of higher education remain seemingly immutable. Now a new wave of tech-driven delivery models is presenting the sector with an opportunity to dramatically enhance the quality of learning -- and the results that students and businesses can expect.
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But 'lecture capture,' in which lectures are recorded for streaming as-is or after being enhanced using video production techniques, has enabled education establishments to re-evaluate the effectiveness of live lectures and lecturers. If lectures can be recorded, why does the lecturer, in person, need to redeliver that talk? Couldn't his or her time be better used doing something else?
'Flipped learning' embodies this change in thinking: rather than the lecturer teaching a subject then setting students assignments, he or she first sets the homework, with the student watching a pre-recorded video of the lecture and then accessing any other resources that the lecturer makes available through the VLE. The lecturer then assesses in class how well the students have understood the subject. It leaves them to concentrate on personal interaction -- either face-to-face or online through the VLE -- rather than simply the deliver of a lecture.
"With online analytical technologies, you can assess how well people are doing throughout the learning module."
Universities, such as Harvard and Stanford, are taking flipped learning one stage further. Rather than, say, a college with a limited budget struggling to find appropriate teaching staff, it can buy in small, private, online courses (SPOCs) from such leading universities, delivered on MOOC-like platforms.
"The most important component [of making that a success] is a local teacher who provides guidance, can make changes to some parts of the course, alter deadlines, add in their own material and so on," says Anant Agarwal, CEO of Harvard's EdX education technology program. SPOCs have certainly proved their effectiveness: 60% of students at San José State University passed its traditional electronics course, but when a SPOC was introduced the pass rate rose to 91%.
Individualised instruction by lecturers then becomes the establishment's point of differentiation. Indeed, the London School of Business and Finance (LSBF) places the entirety of its MBA course online so that potential students can see the quality of the course, learn at their own pace. It is only when they're sure it's what they want, do students then pay for the course and get instruction from lecturers and tutors.
Naturally, there's the potential for students to take the course at their own pace. They can also take modules from other establishments as they see fit or if they think they're better than the ones they're currently receiving.
Analyze and optimize
"Classroom teaching is not the most effective way of transferring knowledge," argues Professor Maurits van Rooijen of the LSBF. He says that lectures will always be too far ahead for some students and too basic for others.
To make that a more flexible and adaptable process, van Rooijen points to the benefits of using 'learning analytics' and 'adaptive learning' technologies, from companies such as Knewton and Smart Sparrow. These analyze how students navigate the online components of courses to see, for example, if they need additional support or the course itself needs to be improved to make it more accessible.
"You can assess a student's competence using item response theory or other algorithms against particular learning objectives and accelerate them or provide remediation content," says David McNally, CTO at education publisher Macmillan. "You can measure whether students do better with video, reading or other types of activities and give them appropriate content accordingly." Through the use of artificial intelligence techniques and 'recommendation agents,' these can also be done automatically.
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