According to the report issued by the New Media Consortium
and the Association of Information Technology Professionals, within the next
five years the education system will be determined by the following trends:
1 Changes in the
culture of innovation
The
world is changing, and education must change along with it. Educational
institutions adopt ideas from the world of business, referring to successful
start-up experiences, and launch new processes. Paper routine is gradually
leaving schools, ceding its place to electronic data processing. Higher
education institutions have realized that technologies can become a catalyst of
educational process improvement. Yet, the culture of innovation means not only
acceptance of new technologies and revision of teaching methods, it also
signifies awareness of the fact that values in the external world constantly
change. This means education must change as well in order to meet student
expectations.
2 Expansion of
cooperation between organizations
The
number of contacts and connections between various organizations in education
is growing, and technologies influence this trend in two ways. First of all, it
becomes impossible not to use technologies, while the use of them is often too
expensive. Therefore educational institutions open a dialogue with each other
and with educational technology makers, so as to agree on advantageous terms
and conditions and to influence final products. Secondly, schools and
universities are beginning to share data and content more actively. Lesson
notes, methodical guidelines, and class records are uploaded to the network.
This is beneficial for everyone: both instructors and students. Various school
blogging platforms are developed, uniting educational institutions in social
media and allowing rapid exchanges of professional experiences.
3 Changes in the
role of student assessment
Technologies
make it possible to work with large data sets, e.g. to record statistics of
student results and conclude which teaching methods are better. It is possible
to maintain a detailed database on each student from his/her entrance to a
secondary school until his/her graduation from a university in order the adjust
his/her individual learning plan and draw conclusions on the education system
on the whole. This shifts focus from final assessment to intermediate results
that prove to be much more important for development of an education strategy.
Given that the said data are accessible not only to teachers, but to students
as well, students gain more independence and control of their opportunities.
4 Spread of open
educational resources
Many
teachers are sincerely happy to share their knowledge with the entire world,
not thinking of any personal benefit. Otherwise it would be difficult to
explain such a rapid dissemination of free educational materials on the
Internet: courses, workbooks, learning content, research articles, and many
more.
5 Spread of
blended learning
Owing
to the information technology, a flipped classroom model has started spreading,
and various forms of blended learning have emerged. Blended learning combines
the best of both worlds: an opportunity to distribute time and effort freely
and to acquire knowledge limitlessly beyond the classroom, as well as
advantages of working with the teacher face to face. The modern trend is that
more and more educational institutions count on an effective combination of
technologies and traditional personal tutorship.
6 Rearrangement of
learning spaces
Educational
institutions have started changing spaces so that students can work with
electronic devices and interact more with each other. One of such rearrangement
options is to place a teacher in the classroom centre with student workplaces
located around the teacher, with information that would have previously been
shown on a blackboard displayed on everyone’s personal screens. Libraries and
other spaces in educational institutions are creating individual learning
places where it is convenient to work on one’s portable devices.