What 3 Demands Will Not Change in Online Education in Next 10 Years?
…have you taken a course online this year?
Goal: To discuss how education will change and not change based on our current world understanding
The other day,12/24/20, I wrote an article where I discussed the three things that my employers and customers of my project management expertise will still demand 10 years from now. Those are the things that will not change BUT how I deliver them might change quite a bit
I also create courses and wanted to also share with you the three things that I believe my students will demand 10 years from now. Based on what I see happening in the world now and training I have witnessed, I believe that they will demand:
- Transformational training
- less “education” more gamified training
- flexibility of how they learn the material
The world of education has been rocked in the last year. People have been forced to learn remotely and reduce the dependance of a teacher standing right in front of them. The natural shift that the world made towards online education was going to occur in the next 5 years. It moved 4 year’s worth of amount in one year.
This could be good and bad.
I believe that transformational training will be more in demand than just theory. People want to be trained to do X. They don’t want fluff. They mistakenly think that only X is important and they will be OK by just learning X and not worrying about anything else.
This idea underneath this idea is that education is a waste of time and that hands on training is the only good type of education. This is like saying,”Give me minimum amount of theory(lecture) and just have me do the training(homework).”
Personally I think this is a mistake. Knowing the Y around the X allows you to see where X can be changed and how. Knowing how to do any X is limited by the lifetime span of that thing. Will your skills in X help you transition to the next thing?
Training is limited to that one thing and the transition and developing your ability to learn the next X to make a living.
Second idea that will not change is also very intriguing. Most online courses suffer from 90–95% failure to finish.
WHAT!!!
Yes, most people sign up for courses, pay their money and never finish the course. That is telling me that they do not have the ability to self teach and the discipline to stick with it until they figure it out.
By adding gamification concepts the completion rate of online courses moves from 5% to 30% and some have even claimed 90%. Pretty impressive!!!
Gamification uses concepts from video games to provide continued rewards and carrots to move the learner along towards the goal of the course. It pulls the student along instead of pushing them along.
Third idea of flexibility is obvious. Most people access their content and data on their phone. ANy course that is not phone friendly will not survive.
One thing I have been resisting BUT now I see as a must is captunes. People tend to follow along with the captunes without the sound. WHAT!!! That one challenges my belief BUT it is reality and I must bend to it.
Hopefully these ideas are somewhat aligned with what you believe.
My seven cents….(this is what I earned from Medium.com for Nov. 2020)
I got to go…my future self alarm went off
Robert Trajkovski is professional with experience in leading people and projects in Steel/ Power, Refining, Chemicals, Industrial Gasses, Software, Consulting and Academia. He has worked for both owners and engineering companies. In addition, he has instructed 73+ courses at several institutions and often offers his courses for free on LinkedIn.
