Mahi Sall, Advisor, Fintech-Bank Partnerships, Payments and Financial Inclusivity
January 25th, 2023
Mahi Sall is the CEO & Founder of FinXpair, a Berlin-based strategic advisory boutique firm focu[...]
Biggest Education Technology Trends for 2023
Guest Post | Dec 6, 2022
Education is what makes us humans capable of thinking and personal growth. All the processes that take place in our society influence how people perceive information. The major recent impact has been made by the Internet and its accessibility. It opened the gates to the world of knowledge in all the possible spheres, people got the chance to discover everything they ever wondered about. School and university education, backed up by Internet sources created the generation of smart citizens. However, until the pandemic times, no one could imagine that the whole education system would be transferred into the virtual world, creating new challenges, as well as unexpected possibilities.
The new reality created new social demands, which stimulate new educational trends to spring up and develop. What can we expect in the forthcoming year and how to accept these changes?
1. Lifelong learning
The education organized in a traditional way doesn’t work anymore, as it’s fully oriented on kids, teenagers, and adolescents. It seems that people after graduation can stop learning, as they have just enough knowledge and hard skills to perform their work well.
Besides, schooling was always organized on the physical premises, narrowing down the number of people who could access educational services due to various reasons. Such an approach limited educational opportunities for a big part of our society.
With online learning, everything changed dramatically. People of any age in any place in the world can reach for new knowledge, new techniques, and new professions just by accessing the web space. There are numerous platforms that share lectures and courses for everyone willing to listen - Udemy, Coursera, Moodle, Future Learn, etc.
Nowadays the accents have changed. It is not what you already know that makes you an efficient worker, but how fast you can acquire new skills and competencies. The business industry grows quickly, and people must keep up the pace.
2. Extended reality
Learners nowadays are quite selective, and sometimes fussy. They won’t just take what you give. The main message that educators are trying to deliver must be presented in an appealing style so that the students showed the desire to listen.
Extended reality includes virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR) and mixed reality (MR) - these are great tools to grab and hold learners’ attention. Just by using special devices and a laptop, the learner can get into the atmosphere of something he is trying to learn.
There’s no interest in just listening to the teacher talking about the wonders of the world, yet it’s quite catching if you can see these wonders around you, in VR glasses. Chemistry, History, Physics, Geography, etc. - all the subjects reach new heights. Instead of being passive listeners, students become observers and active participants.
3. Nano-lessons
A journey of thousand miles starts with a small step. The same is applicable to education trends. We try to make students learn basically everything from every subject. However, the attention span gets shorter and shorter (and not only kids undergo such changes, but adults as well) and they can’t embrace the whole avalanche of information. They are used to portions of knowledge given on social platforms, i.e., long paragraphs from History are replaced with short and clear timelines or video explanations, which make the information easier to memorize.
Instead of complaining about detrimental changes caused by the Internet, we just need to accept the new ways of living and work on new approaches, creating nano-lessons, or mini-lessons that are focused on one learning goal. They will be beneficial for the students, as they will be able to hear what the teacher says and to accept this information. Step by step the students will learn everything that was planned, however, with smaller iterations.
4. Focus on individual needs and talents
The traditional approach to education aims to make all the students good at the same subjects, so they all have decent levels in all the competencies. Luckily, nowadays this trend loses its strength. Children can develop their talents and not waste time on unnecessary things, that will never be used in their life.
A very common example is a student who performs brilliantly with numbers, plans to become a part of a huge IT world, and can write code for the simplest program. However, he is forced to write endless essays, which looks like a local disaster for him, making him feel annoyed and miserable at the same time. Fortunately, there are services that can help a student with a “do my essay cheap” request, helping to overcome the writing challenges, while the educational institutions change their vision of an intelligent person.
5. Soft-skills training
“Soft” and “hard” skills are relatively new in our society, as terms, however, they represent the two important sides of every worker.
Hard skills help to perform the work well; these are practical, technical, and task-based skills. Soft skills are social in nature, as they represent the qualities of the person - critical thinking, problem-solving, creativity, emotional intelligence, collaboration, and adaptability.
These are the attributes that help people perform in the company and in society as well. Some may think that these skills are like innate abilities, however, they can be trained and practiced.
See: Entrepreneurial Spirit: How Does Business Education Affect Personality?
Hard skills will never be enough if there are no soft skills for proper communication, and vice versa. A brilliant level of soft skills will not make up for the lack of knowledge. It’s all about balance.
Education is undergoing lots of challenges and changes. They may seem painful, as people are used to a specific way of educational behavior and thinking. However, flexibility matters. It’s important to let the new trends into the educational world to make people feel comfortable in the new reality.
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