Educational forecast

Not sure where we're headed...

As I am an experimental learner - I learn best by putting into practice what I’m tying to acquire - I think I will get a lot our of this course.  The MOOC model allows for a lot of action.  There are forums, a hashtag, journaling, etc. - many ways to take the ideas that the videos represent and play around with them.  So I think that will lead to me retaining more of the theories from the lecture and being able to generate more ideas for practical applications.

I think the future of education is going to be very different from what is commonly accepted as a learning environment (didactic, authoritative).  And yet, since I am an American, I am cynical about some things.  I believe there will be even more of a split between wealthy districts and poor ones, with the adaptive technology, theory, and resources going to the wealthier districts.  So in a way, not much will change in terms of the US way of education.

Already now, in my relatively small teaching career, I am noticing more and more “corporate” influence on academics - compliance, standardization, really granular evaluation - an attempt to make the learning process similar to a computer program - none of which bodes well for us humanities folks! 

And yet, I am seeing more and more students lacking basic skills, so I do have to engage in very rote learning with them (e.g. for grammar, parts of an essay, citing research).  I don’t really see this getting better unless we do a 180 nation wide and really change how we are educating.

That being said, there are so many more opportunities now to learning non-academic ways.  For the curious enough, there are tons of materials available online and off to foster learning.  If someone really is curious enough, they will at least google their way into some level of understanding.