Education is an ever-evolving field.   Over the course of the 21st century, we are seeing the future of education evolve in three key ways:

• transitioning from traditional to progressive education
• designing educational experiences using technology for self-paced, customised learning solutions like our LMS PLATFORM
• creating more fluid award design, allowing for microlearning and badging for learning and showcasing specialised skills

Traditional education began with a “sage on the stage” approach, where the teacher leads the class through a topic — sometimes through discussion, but often through some form of directed teaching.

 

While this has evolved over time, such that schools and tertiary institutions now use standardised curricula and supportive materials (e.g., textbooks) the general frame of teacher-led learning has widely continued into the 21st century. Many teachers and lecturers also use a “chalk and talk” approach, where the educator writes notes or material on the board (or in a PowerPoint) and expects students to follow along, with limited time for questioning or practical tasks.

 

Progressive education methods are still relatively new, with discovery and student-led or student-centric learning originating around the 1960s. These approaches centre on tailoring learning experiences to the student’s specific needs, making them especially valuable for job-ready learning and training programs.

 

Discovery learning is sometimes called problem-based learning.

 

Well, it above all else, presents students with a problem or scenario and asks them to draw on their:

• Knowledge and understanding — i.e., known facts or theories
• Analytical skills — i.e., breaking down the problem into component parts to work out what must be solved, what tools may be required
• Critical reasoning and thinking — e.g., using skills to work out potential solutions and determine what is relevant/irrelevant, which factors are most important, why some solutions may/may not work
• Synthesis — i.e., combining knowledge and understanding with analysis to determine a set of actions, create a plan, or otherwise provide a solution to the set problem.

 

This style of education is increasingly relevant to:

• training those entering the workforce
• re-skilling and upskilling existing staff
• retraining for career transition.

This is because problem-based learning helps students learn to use existing skill sets (e.g., analytical skills) alongside new information (e.g., new knowledge acquired from professional development or training programs) to create new, engaging solutions in parallel fields. This is essential for maintaining agility and flexibility in the 21st century workscape.

 

Although the transition from traditional to progressive education began several decades ago, our educational future is keyed to needs of the 21st century workscape.

To help identify these, we need to think about the core competencies and skills driving recruiting and industry improvement, particularly in this pandemic period.

 

Factors driving the educational future include:

• increased need for remote work
• increased use of technology
• need for soft skills in the workplace, including networking, time management, communication, leadership, teamwork
• changes in interaction between teams, dealing with remote management and client-side interaction
• rapid turnover in certain industries
• increased need for professional development for specialised industries
• decreased time for recruiting
• decreased time for skills development prior to job start.

 

Meeting these needs requires educators and educational providers to:

• assess competence in existing learning and technologies to design relevant learning experiences
• determine specific needs for both student and industry
• create frameworks addressing needs
• develop a variety of levelled learning experiences for addressing general learning vs. specialised learning
• develop naming conventions or awards that showcase learning
• develop course packages that work with existing timeframes.

 

 Assessing competence is key to developing learning packages and course materials that develop the skills students actually require, rather than covering material they already know, or which is irrelevant to the industry.

 

There are a few ways to do this, but one of the most effective is to use a blend of:

1. self-assessment and reflection
2. manager or peer assessment
3. assessment or examination task.

The assessment tools for the student (self) and their manager or peer (if working with a direct company or industry) are often the same, or very similar in design. They are generally simple surveys which list the expectations, followed by a clear, numerical rating system.

 

For instance, a tool for assessing the student’s competency in business communication might include:

• Ability to organise ideas
• Uses clear, effective language choices
• Uses active listening techniques
• Responds to questions with thoughtful answers
• Leaves room for others to speak
• Uses visual aids during presentations.

Each statement would have a rating level, usually such that 0 or 1 is the lowest score and 4 or 5 is the highest score.

 

Self-reflection tools are usually short answer questions that use a prompt or question to encourage the student to reflect on their strengths and weaknesses. These can include questions such as:

 

What strengths do you think you have as a communicator?

When you speak with clients, what tools do you use to build a relationship with them?

 

Note that these are open-ended questions, meaning they require more than yes/no answers. Open-ended questions are essential for getting the student to really think about the question and how it relates to them; yes/no questions (also called closed questions) make it too easy for the student to disengage from the prompt.

 

Competency can also be assessed using an assessment or examination task. This may be as simple as looking over previous work to determine skill level, or as detailed as using an online exam or placement test to see where students are at.

 

Online exams and placement tests are increasingly common in e-learning or online courses, but they can miss students who have high competency but may:

• use different terms, or non-standardised terms
• have learning differences or disability
• use more creative solutions.

This means that using existing work or portfolios — or a combination of both — is often more valuable in assessing competency, especially if designing a bespoke learning package.

 

Competency assessments produce unique results — each student has a different level of skill, experience, and interest that creates a unique learner. The 21st century technology available to us as educators allows us to work with this uniqueness to create personalised learning packages that focus on the unique needs of the student.  

A personalised learning package is different to a standard curriculum. In a traditional university setting, students take a degree program with core subjects that form the basis of the degree specialisation (or major, in some cases).

For instance, an Arts student specialising in English will have a selection of English literature and writing courses, complemented by a few other courses of their choice; a student specialising in Physics will have core theoretical and experimental Physics courses, with a selection of complementary math and, most likely, research courses.

 

Non-traditional education providers such as ACS Distance Education and its affiliates have already recognised this and support the opportunity to offer personalised learning packages that allow the student to create their own course programs tailored to their unique needs.

 

For instance, the Physics student interested in science communication and education may create a package using courses like:

• Communication
• Educational Psychology
• Delivering Distance Education
• Freelance Writing
• Technical Writing (there should be links for all of these)

This package means the student doesn’t have to cover material they already know (e.g., Physics) but can study areas that will help them attain their specific goal of creating a science education consultancy for primary schools.

 

Online courses and e- learning systems are the way forward

 

An integral part of providing a personalised learning experience is giving students flexibility in how and when they study. This means that students can work around their schedules, completing study tasks and assignments at times that suit them.

 

This opens the educational field to a much broader student population, including non-traditional student groups such as:

• first in family to study
• student providers/students self-supporting or supporting others
• student parents
• student carers
• students with disability
• students with diverse learning needs.

These groups are historically underserved in the student population; students in the first four groups generally have a higher number of responsibilities than the average university student. Students with disability and/or diverse learning needs may be unable to access traditional face-to-face setups for a variety of reasons, or work “regular” 9 to 5 hours.

 

By offering flexible, online and remote learning, newer providers open the door to much larger markets. Combined with personalised course packages, this creates a powerful learning solution for a broad swathe of the population.

 

 

Future-Forward Teachers

 

One of the criticisms of online learning is that it potentially degrades the student-teacher relationship. A strong student-teacher relationship is based on trust — trust that both parties can ask and answer questions in a judgement-free zone, where the focus is on the learning.

 

Traditional educators think that such trust can only be developed in a classroom format.

 

Yet humans have created trust-based relationships via correspondence for centuries — prior to the invention of the telegram and telephone, most distance communication occurred via letter.

 

People poured thoughts on to the page, providing considered accounts of days and experiences for friends and family. The time involved in writing a letter — and the distance between an event occurring and being recorded — provided opportunities for careful thought and reflection.

 

Online learning offers the same benefit.

 

Rather than asking students to provide on-the-spot answers which draw on memory and rote learning, distance education provides teachers the opportunity to set more challenging material that students can work on at a slower pace, leaving time for critical analysis and thinking of problems.

 

This gives the student time to:

• read the question and recognise key terms
• analyse the question/problem
• map out answers
• ensure answers are tailored to the solution and meet the criteria (e.g., if the answer is supposed to be 300 words, the student has time to ensure they meet this word limit)
• reflect on their answer and make changes as they process their learning.

 

These steps are well-mapped to Bloom’s Taxonomy, one of the core educational taxonomies used in teaching and learning design across the world.

 

When students take time to work through questions in this way, they submit more well-rounded assessments. Working through the challenges also provides them with ways to identify their weaknesses and questions, then lay these out clearly for teaching staff.

 

This brings us to a common misconception about online learning — that the absence of a live teacher is equivalent to no teacher. Online and remote teaching means that teachers may interact with students across different times (and time zones) rather than live, but it does not reduce the value of the teaching offered. Indeed, the opportunity to write considered answers to student questions and engage in personalised dialogue means that students often come away with learning that specifically targets their unique needs.

TOP 5

WAYS ACS AFFILIATES CURRENTLY BENEFIT  USING OUR COURSE CONTENT  TO PROVIDE THE BEST  PERSONALISED LEARNING EXPERIENCE  FOR THEIR STUDENTS 

 

• possibility to offer students the ability to design their own course certificate through choice of modules
• options to design and offer niche courses to prospective students using modules pulled together to create a specific certificate etc that is unique to your college
• offering online education and learning flexibility
• Future forward academics have written the courses specific to the needs of today’s learning environment and requirements
• ACS courses all provide your students with the opportunity to use problem-based learning and help students meet real world challenges