Education in 2030: the Times of London looks head

A few weeks ago the Times of London asked a group of British, Australian, and American academics to imagine what education might look like in 2030.  The results are engaging and diverse, illustrating neatly the wide range of education futuring.  They also hit many high notes for current issues.

For example, these themes appear: automation of the economy, automating learning, flipping the classroom, shortened attention spans, lectures in decline or triumph, mobile devices as enabler or enemy to learning, data analytics, interdisciplinarity, development of new competencies, and assessment.

There’s a wide range of anticipation about the scope of change, from massive revolution to slow, incremental change (check this comment, for example).

I was struck by one vision of a health-centered class, from Dan Schwartz and Candace Thille:

Th[e] de-Balkanisation of university departments will also result in Health 101 becoming the most popular course. Advances in biology, medicine, psychology and nutrition will combine to offer strong prescriptions for the care of oneself and one’s children that everyone will need to know about; students will learn a range of basic disciplinary theories in an applied context, so that they can see the personal relevance.

I like the way this builds on our contemporary sense of wellness and self-care, plus connections to my Health Care Nation scenario.

Also impressive was a stark, post human future by Eric Cooke, and want to share it at length because of its extreme vision:

[I]f I am still alive by 2030, I hope to have a wise and erudite AI tutor and mentor. It could be humanoid or simply an app on a device I carry. Always knowing my state from the sensors I wear, it will know when and how best to take me through the ideas I have always wanted to enjoy, using Platonic dialogues to ensure I explore and prove my understanding.

I hope my AI tutor will link me up with other people who also enjoy bright ideas and challenges to the mind, allowing us to associate in a form of university freed from the burdens of the factory processes that now demean so much of what academics do. But this happy ending will come to pass only if those in power see the technological juggernaut for what it is and begin to work out what needs to be done before we all become roadkill on the information superhighway.

Stephen Joel Trachtenberg‘s scenario also sees automation massively transforming education, albeit not to such an extent.

I didn’t know about the Calohee project, so I’ll dig into it.

(thanks to Matthew Henry)

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