This post is a discussion forum for ideas related to W01 – Mobility Perspectives.
Specifically, this is a place to share your ideas here about whether the education industry can successfully reinvent itself from the inside, or will it be disrupted by new, more agile entities?
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I came to my role as a K-12 educator after a long time working as an adult educator, largely because I didn’t enjoy my time as a student, despite doing well academically. Basically, I hated the structures of formal education, which seemed dated and irrelevant at worst, underwhelming at best. So I’m honestly hoping for massive disruption, and my interest in the MET program comes from a belief that technology will be part of that process.
As many people have pointed out, education is hardly static, and there are many modern trends that have improved things since my days in school. However, I think these are still hit and miss for delivering on what they promise. As an example, I worked in a private international school in China, which used the International Baccalaureate program. On paper this meant we should have been progressive in the program design and execution. However, traditional elements kept being force on the staff and students: exams were required, regardless of any other assessments teachers wanted, lecture style teaching was the preferred method (especially if parents were going to be visiting), and every class needed to have textbooks. I’d like to think this was a negative outlier, but the reality is no matter what tools and resources you give a school, the preconceptions of what a school is and does are hard to change.
We’re seeing incremental improvements, and while better than nothing, the underlying structures are getting more entrenched. Formal education (K-12 schools and degree granting colleges and universities) will have trouble changing this; the number of stakeholders involved with decision making will perpetuate many elements for a long time. I think about these elements, which so entrenched into the historical design of schools it seems almost impossible to question them:
– Classes of many students to one teacher (from the logistical concern of getting enough teachers and keeping the cost of education reasonable)
– Grades (used to decide which students gain limited opportunities for further education or employment)
– Exams (because students aren’t trusted to do high stakes assessments at home without help)
– Care of children (teachers hate being called babysitters, but with more parents working the daytime protection of children is really part of the service provided by schools).
Granted, we can find positive spins on these (larger classes allow social interaction and learning experiences, grades are a method of feedback) but if we’re going to talk about truly disruptive changes, maybe some of these features can reconsidered. (and of course there are situations when that is true; Montessori schools seem to have some very different ways to implement early childhood education)
My emphasis was on the lock in on formal education (imparting mandatory learning from a social perspective, or awarding credentials necessary for some other purpose). Informal learning, where the student is actively looking to learn something specific without the formal recognition or management of learning, is something different. I think we’re already seeing how this can be effective: there are plenty of examples of people learning new skills (computer programming, woodworking, music, photography) through teachers outside the formal education networks. Sites like Skillshare, YouTube or Udemy cater to these, offering anyone the chance to become a teacher in an area of expertise or interest. The biggest limitation currently is likely the reluctance of firms, governments or schools to recognize informal learning as a suitable credential. This likely explains the early emphasis on creative fields in these communities: the success of an artist or musician is more based on their creative output than their formal education, but while I could accept a YouTube educated musician based on their compositions and performance, I’d be highly skeptical of a doctor with similar pedigree. That could change, at least for many jobs: if we see more portfolio based assessments of work or alternative qualification processes (competency exams instead of mandatory degrees), things would be shifting in favor of the independent self-directed learner.
I think I’d like to challenge the idea that the “education industry” (and isn’t that a loaded description!) needs to ‘reinvent itself’, or else a nimble, agile entity will do the job for it (as has happened with journalism, retail, hospitality…).
While I agree that change is inevitable, I am more in agreement with people like Justin Reich. For those who haven’t encountered him, he’s director of the Teaching Systems Lab at MIT, and the author of “Failure to Disrupt” (2020). Here’s a podcast of the latter: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqc4LI1vdO4
Reich argues that there is a long history of innovation in education – though it’s often claimed that education hasn’t changed in essence for >150 years, we *are not* still sitting in classrooms and rote learning while the master writes in chalk on the blackboard (or at least not in most places). Tech-evangelists (including mobile ones) ignore this, and tend to create a straw man of a static, friction-bound, conservative education system that their chosen tech will disrupt.
That said, it is clear that mobile tech is changing societies, and education is already being impacted. What I’m challenging is the notion that education needs a wholesale reinvention, or that the alternatives on offer today are guaranteed to be improvements. I like the notion of ‘tinkering’ – a more realistic approach to adopting ed tech that works in existing situations. And let’s be honest – the market-driven approaches that are usually advocated for everything have not exactly led to utopia for most of us – perhaps the idea of education as an industry in a market needs to be challenged more often?
Here’s a precis of the intro to Failure to Disrupt – I strongly recommend it!
In 2008, Harvard Business School published ‘Disrupting Class’, a book about online learning and the future of K-12 schools. They predicted that by 2019, half of all middle- and high-school courses would be replaced by online options, and “the cost will be one-third of today’s costs, and the courses will be much better”. Salman Khan (he of the Academy) made similar predictions. The same rhetoric of disruption was heard in higher-ed too, especially when MOOCs arrived in 2011/2012. In 2012 the New York Times reported that “the shimmery hope is that free courses can bring the best education in the world to the most remote corners of the planet.” By November 2013, MOOC pioneer Sebastian Thrun had revised his view: “we don’t educate people as others wished, or as I wished. We have a lousy product”. By 2019, Salman Khan was also more circumspect: “Now that I run a school, I see that some of the stuff is not as easy to accomplish compared to how it sounds theoretically”. He now saw Khan Academy not as a replacement for ‘traditional’ teaching, but as a modest supplement to traditional instruction.
Reich goes on to say that “in the decades ahead, educators can expect to hear a new generation of product pitches about the transformative potential of new technologies for school systems: how AI or VR… will, this time, lead to profound changes in education”.
He is equally skeptical about techno-positivism: “One way to look at the TED conference is as an annual revival meeting for charismatic technologists; reading transcripts from TED talks about educational topics is a reliable research strategy for finding unfulfilled predictions about education technology over the last decade. The disruption of schools promised by education-technology advocates in the first twenty years of the twenty-first century has been universally unrequited.”
I don’t want to come across as entirely skeptical: I’m open to being convinced that Mobile and Open Techs are going to be the game-changer *this time* – and I am convinced of the value of technology, properly employed, for education. That’s why I’m in the MET!
I think that this question presupposes two things that are arguable: that the education industry isn’t being disrupted, and that it isn’t already adapting to change. Some examples of disruptive change include:
• Teacher Pay Teachers
• Online course delivery
• Blended course delivery
• New curriculum topics
• Multimedia options for submitting student work
• Multimedia options for presenting topics
• Reduced reliance on static textbooks
• Online games, such as Prodigy and Mathletics
Some of these changes are indeed coming from agile entities, especially TPT. These entities are marketing directly to teachers, making their jobs easier reducing friction in classroom decoration, lesson planning, etc. In this disruption, like Uber, empowers the classroom teacher with choice in content and by removing barriers to becoming a resource producer.
Other changes are coming through the required use of online Learning Management Systems. This has been acceleration by the disruptive force of the pandemic, as noted by other posts, but was already becoming more commonplace before 2020. Some of the advantages of an LMS include tools such as plagiarism checkers, which can be significant time savers when dealing with student essays.
A factor that makes the education industry hard to disrupt from the outside is the aversion for people at any level (parents, teachers, schools, districts, ministries, government) to take risks with children and their education. Outside of schools, training programs are often defined by the number of hours required to achieve government certification as though how long something is studied is a guarantee of its quality. Widespread disruption of the education industry requires an effective demonstration that the benefits outweigh the risks of adopting new strategies.
I agree with all of your points, Douglas. I think that we are already adapting right along with technological advances, and integrating new tech fairly efficiently. I love TPT and am purchasing a set of digital escape rooms for my math classes next semester. I also love that I can just Google lesson plans, project ideas, no prep lessons, sick day lessons, etc., and have the entire lesson/project/worksheets already there and good to go. I am looking forward to being more of a creator on platforms like TPT rather just a consumer. Who knows when a side hustle might turn into a great gig!
This is a challenging question to answer. From my understanding, this question is asking us to predict and share our perspective of the future of learning and the potential frictions. As this course is a compilation of the thoughts and work of many students of the past, I believe the “more agile” entities are most likely changing over the semesters of the course. From reading a post to this question by Lisa H. in May 2018, I found it fascinating to see their thoughts pre-COVID and now looking at it from a perspective of approximately 5 years later.
I think there will be many disruptions from Artificial Intelligence (AI), which will force education to re-invent itself. Particularly, it may re-invent assessments and make the process of grading a much more individualized process, providing immediate feedback to the students. This will transform the role of the teacher/educator, allowing them more time to focus on the students individually and become motivators of education.
In my original draft for my post, I considered a potentially scary scenario: where powerful AI algorithms are responsible for teaching children, and minimally trained adults there to simply supervise. At what point will our reliance on AI stop? What lines need to be drawn in the sand?
I, Robot (the book, not the movie) is becoming more realistic than ever!
I was just reading an article about AI software being used to hack and make cyber attacks. This is definitely something to think about. As much as I enjoy just sitting, the idea of my job becoming simply a warm body in the room to make sure the students are fine, leaves me with a very cold feeling. Every now and then is fine, but all the time… no thank you. That would most definitely lead to me changing careers again!
TRIBOLOGY: Can the education industry successfully reinvent itself from the inside, or will it be disrupted by new, more agile entities?
I am sorry, but this is the first week of the new course that I know nothing about, so let me start by asking questions myself. So, are we talking about public vs private educational institutions here or something else? What are those mysterious “more agile” entities? If this is about traditional education (schools and universities) vs various available experimental online courses, then no, they are not enemies, they complement each other perfectly.
Besides, both conventional and experimental areas of education consist of people who naturally evolve (whether they like it or not), and therefore, everything is in a constant process of self-reinvention. I just don’t see a problem here at all. Changes are taking place on the inside and outside of education, and this is normal. Thank you!
The optimist in me would love to say that the education industry can reinvent itself, but truthfully, I don’t think it entirely can. In school systems, small adaptations are much more plausible than a complete overhaul. Many lifetimes have passed since the first school system began in Canada and yet it remains largely the same. I think change has been hindered by organizations who are in positions of power such as the government. Inside a school, there are people (ex. teachers, admin) who are excited about the future of learning who do want to make changes in their classrooms to better facilitate new learning, experimentation and growth, but their needs don’t have a place in the robust budgets already set to make additions to the school that would better serve the institution’s marketing strategy as opposed to making a big impact for hundreds of students everyday. Something of concern is furthering the socioeconomic divide between students. Some private schools have the means to provide their students the technology and methodology of a new way of teaching and learning. Ideally, the education industry reinvention would happen across the board as to not leave any student far behind in life. My examples and thoughts weave in-and-out of grade-level education and post-secondary education, though I think there are common threads throughout.
New to me recently is a role on a corporate learning and development team; I’m seeing the tools, methods and topics of learning within this corporation change and evolve from what they once were. My team is building learning for professionals to teach them about policies, software/interfaces, and company history and culture, but also topics and experiences for personal growth and interest. In this corporate ecosystem, that is easier to affect with pivotal change than a school board, I think reinvention is possible. Though, it might take a number of years to really reshape what people think of when the words “workplace training” comes to mind.
This is certainly a hot topic that keeps re-emerging as new technology allows us to dream about possible impacts on education. Of course, it is not all mere dreaming, although there are usually a lot of over-enthusiastic people that don’t consider other factors (think about the hype around MOOCs when they first emerged), but we can definitely see that educational systems are being transformed. I think that what’s important to understand is that the ‘education industry’ includes both new and old areas. The new areas are those in which new ways of learning are emerging and are independent of traditional systems of learning. On the other hand, the old areas are the traditional systems of learning. I think that transformation in traditional systems of learning (such as universities) is inevitably slower and meets more resistance because there’s a well-established and deeply rooted learning tradition. For this reason, I don’t think it will be completely disrupted as is often imagined by futurists. I think that it will inevitably be transformed by acquiring characteristics of new learning trends, but always within some foundational traditional ideologies and organizational structures. This is already happening, particularly since the pandemic, as we see that institutions are incorporating elements of hybrid-learning, student-centered learning, etc.
I am a little late to this Week 1 discussion – Apologies. I’d like to comment on the realm of higher education in relation to tribology and questions surrounding change, agility and the adoption of mobile innovation. One of David’s posts from awhile ago resonated with me. He notes how: “the teaching world will stop attracting and credentializing those who wish to validate their own educational paths by perpetuating 20th Century learning conventions. They are the gatekeepers of the friction in school settings.” I’ve worked in academia for nearly a decade, mostly as an instructor and SME (and now in the realm of instructional design), and this claim strikes me as quite true – and perhaps truer for certain institutions than others. This past term, in Planning and Managing Learning Technologies in Higher Education, we meditated on eLearning rationales and readiness in higher ed, and via Bates et al, critiqued these very ‘gatekeeping’ tendencies within so-called ‘traditional’ institutions. Indeed, the traditional institutions that are most hesitant to eLearning have references buried in their vision statements. In contrast, those with more advanced adoption or maturity of eLearning boast transparent eLearning rationales developed with best practices in mind while working to support staff and faculty during and after implementation.
Tangentially, I feel as though it will be incredibly difficult to transition higher ed institutions away from Learning Management Systems – to bring content out of the walls of the LMS, and create more open, fluid, flexible and collaborative spaces. To what extent are LMS’s responsible for maintaining said ‘gatekeeping’ in higher ed.
K-12 and Higher-Ed systems have a significant “institutional momentum” (related to but slightly different from David’s term “friction”) that is resists the adoption or acceptance of new ways of thinking and doing, within them. The term “gatekeeper” used above is appropriate to describe those constructs that consolidate the existing way of doing things. Often, gatekeepers are budgetary: once an institution has invested significant monies into an LMS, or other technology rollout, there will be immense resistance to abandoning that technology until the investment is “paid back”. The gatekeepers can be philosophical, in the way that curriculums are slow to adapt to new realities and opportunities. The gatekeepers can be regulatory or bureaucratic, in the way that government sanctioning of institutions controls access to education.
That being said, different ways of learning are upon us already as illustrated by other posts in this thread, but they are more quickly picked up and adopted by individuals (DIY Learning) or private-sector training programs. When the scope of the learning opportunity is narrower, “agile entities” will find their way into acceptance in those ecosystems more quickly.
As many have already said, education has to evolve if it doesn’t want to be eradicated. There are different models of education out there that could be used as examples, such as secondary schools that branch into technical and academic groups. There are also private schools that have resources for continuous professional development and educational technology and emphasize soft skills such as time management and self-regulation. I consider these are examples of schools reinventing themselves from the inside out to meet the demands of parents and the work world. Of course there are flaws to both systems, for example, high school is too early for many to be making such a big decision that will affect their future and with the private school system, that can lead to a further disparity between socioeconomic classes and hinder social mobility. Can education reinvent itself? It could, but outside forces (government, lobbyists, corporate organizations) will play a major role in what direction this reinvention looks like.
As many have already alluded to, my initial reaction to this questions is that Education has no choice but to reinvent itself before it is replaced by “faster, easier and cheaper alternatives”. If educators, and the greater educational system as a whole for that matter, can stop being a source of friction and embrace the powerful mobile learning technologies that allow for ubiquitous learning, the possibilities are endless.
This question is very interesting. In the trades education and apprenticeship program, the people in industry have a huge influence on the learning outcomes of apprentices that move through the trades education program. As part of my job, I gather those who are working in the industry and some instructors. Together they come up with the learning outcomes and learning tasks that have to be taught. This is how change is driven in the curriculum. Most instructors have been teaching for many years do not know new technology that is commonly used and how the industry have changed since they last worked in the field. With these conversations, instructors can clearly see what the industry is facing and know what to change to ensure apprentices are successful as they are moving through the program.
I agree that institutions needs to get with the current times and it is long overdue. There might be some budgetary issues or teachers who have been in this industry for way to long and are reluctant to change, but maybe they do not know what changes could be made. With our formal education, it would be interesting to see if the end users (students, managers, etc) can come together with instructors and department heads to discuss what changes could be implemented. This process is similar to a customer satisfaction survey. With these conversations, it gives the institution insight to what their students are experiencing and also puts pressure on them to implement change. I am not saying that the institution has to give into a 100% of what students or end-users are saying, but at least a conversation is there and perhaps they are able to comprise.
Institutions within education have an ingrained mission of bolstering society through knowledge, but far too often they follow a protectionist approach with regard to that knowledge and how it is disseminated. Few institutions have shown a willingness to figurative open their doors to everyone. New technological approaches to dissemination are in the midst of disturbing this protectionism, but it takes time and willingness for change. Some institutions have that willingness and some do not as Anna so clearly articulated.
I share some of Olivia’s skepticism when it comes to the speed at which these institutions are moving, but there seems to be an evolving appetite for developing outlets for all students through novel modes of delivery. Some of that evolution was forced during the pandemic, and we’ll have to see if it can maintain its momentum with many institutions shifting back to their former delivery modes.
As a member of staff at a university, and a father of kids in middle school, I have seen how institutions are slow to respond to the needs of society as Cassie describes. This slow response is largely a result of the minutiae of the institutions’ structure with stringent curriculum and roles for educators.
If we compare the education industry to the retail industry, perhaps education needs a dominant player to shift the landscape similar to how Amazon shifted retail from bricks and mortar to technological delivery of goods. Several companies have tried with MOOCs and other forms of educational platforms but none seem to have really established themselves as a true trendsetter.
I constantly question if the curriculum is as stringent as we make it to be or if that is just a construct that we continue to reiterate between ourselves. I have yet to meet the curriculum content police but I do hear from parents and other staff when they are not pleased about something. While every year appears to be calculated down to the minute of instruction we all know very well that beanbags are tossed around and snack times are taken earlier than scheduled. The hidden curriculums for wellbeing, sanity, and context that learning takes place in will shape the learning experience, or at least school experience, as much as the content itself. I would agree with you Sam that we will take a slow path to change until there is a release from conservation in the panarchy cycle.
Educators who want to change need support from above, in other words, institutional support. Institutions that have been in existence for many years tend to live off of their prestigious name and reputation. They fail to recognize that students need experiential learning as this will prepare them for the workforce. So, integration of technology is a necessity across all disciplines. Also, institutional support should encourage educators who are reluctant to integrate innovative strategies into teaching. What is support? Funding, opportunities for professional development, or learning communities specifically for educators. Are steps in the right direction.
Reinvention can occur successfully, but institutions need to change as a whole, not individual departments. I have seen departments implement innovative approaches to learning, and others are still using traditional methods. In scenarios like this, students get frustrated and may turn to other entities that offer more options for learning. Therefore, education institutions need to think organization-wide initiative, students, administrators, educators are part of the transformation.
Beautifully articulated, Anna.
Well said, Anna! I completely agree with the important points you’ve raised here. As a minor example, I think about the current movement in many public schools in BC who are working to implement competency-based assessment. Some departments within my high school are even striving to remove percentage grades altogether to shift students’ mentality away from “what grade did I get” and towards a growth mindset where they are more concerned with the skills and competencies they have mastered, as well as how to improve those that are still under development. The major barrier that staff is encountering with this kind of assessment stems from an institutional reality: at the end of the day post secondary institutions still require a percentage/final grade. To your point, in order for true change and progress, institutions need to change as a whole. Otherwise, the “friction” that individual teachers, departments and schools encounter may be demotivating enough to make them abandon their efforts.
In reading Anna’s post, it reminds me of the current Virtual schools in both Elementary and Secondary schools that are offered at Peel District School Board. The support above from reinvention in this idea of creating Virtual schools was due to Covid-19. However, this reinvention of education does not come with additional qualification, education or training requirements. Thus, educators are again asked to fend for themselves or these new educational directions does not present best practices that support student and teacher success in these remote and mostly mobile educational practice. I say mostly mobile, as many of my Grade 1/2 online students were using phones or iPads for remote learning.
If the education industry could reinvent itself from the inside, it would have already. Ideas and theories about how to best educate and engage learners have been around for a long time. We know what is best for students but these ideas rarely get implemented. We as a society are having a really difficult time with our lack of imagination and are resistant to change. Schools are still stuck on the notion of seat in butts, teaching around a set curriculum, teaching to a test, everyone learning the same way, and dividing learners by age and abilities. I agree with my classmate Erica who said “Formal education and educational institutions have been broken for sometime now, due to notions of control, power, and ego governing over the system”. We can’t seem to let go and let those that actually teach and study take the reins of the educational systems. I believe that it will take disruption from the outside to make these changes. We are in the middle of a great disruption due to the pandemic. It has already greatly changed education and will continue to do so. I believe that it is a cultural shift due to an extraneous force like the pandemic that will change education radically, not technology.
I think you are onto something here, in that a culture shift due to extraneous force like the pandemic will change education radically. I think it already has, both in the adoption of edtech and mobile learning out of necessity, and a greater appreciation and understanding of the importance of wellness and healthy breaks in our work and learning day. Will it solve what’s broken due to notions of control, power, and ego governing over the system? I think another shift needs to occur before that happens, although happily I am finding many worlds outside of academia that are intolerant of governing systems of control, power, and ego. If you care to explore down that rabbit hole, look into the Web Monetization Community: https://community.webmonetization.org/, Grant for the Web: https://www.grantfortheweb.org/, and MozFest: https://www.mozillafestival.org/en/ Loving learning within those communities and how supportive and valued they make feel.
One of the major sources of tension I see in the landscape of public research universities is that of institutional mission versus societal needs and expectations. It is becoming increasingly obvious that what students want and need is not necessarily what universities were set up to do. Are universities a source of preparation for the contemporary working world? Or are universities a place for research and the development of critical thought?
This tension is not merely theoretical; it is present at every level of the university experience. A tenured faculty member must conduct original research based on stringent, immovable guidelines to meet the expectations of their department while simultaneously being expected to innovate their teaching to meet the expectations of their students. A contract faculty member may have freedom from the expectations of research and thereby more capacity for teaching innovation, but often at the cost of job security. Students are told that they must go to university to enhance their career prospects, but ultimately find themselves participating in a system that only halfway believes that it is providing career preparation. And staff are frequently caught in a blurry middle zone of having the capacity to consider innovation and disruption, but little power or influence to implement it.
I think mobile and open technologies are helping expose these deep, complicated tensions within the contemporary post-secondary sphere. But how does one reduce friction between “buyer” and “seller” when it’s unclear what is even being sold?
I guess I didn’t actually answer the core question posed in this discussion! But in my opinion, true disruption would be a complete overhaul of traditional education pathways – with an emphasis on outcome variation between multiple, equally valid and respectable post-high school options for learning and skill development. I don’t believe that any individual public educational system will get there on their own. From the messaging that high school students get about attending university, to the increasingly unclear mission of post secondary institutions, I think that change will have to come at a societal level – perhaps spurred on by mobile and open platforms – and responded to by educational systems who will be forced to “keep up”.
Hi Cassie,
I’m late to this discussion and don’t expect you’ll see it, but thought I would post anyway. I was thinking about how technologies create (new) problems that are often (only) solved by new technologies, and I’ve heard ‘bureaucracies’ described in a similar way. I also agree with Olivia’s observation that “We know what is best for students but these ideas rarely get implemented… Schools are still stuck on the notion of seat in butts, teaching around a set curriculum, teaching to a test, everyone learning the same way, and dividing learners by age…” etc. and I think our educational institutions have just become too big, and their roots in society are too deep to be (easily, or quickly) disrupted in a meaningful way. I think you’re 100% correct when you say “change will have to come at a societal level” and traditional educational institutions will hold their ground for as long as possible.
Adding to this here that often research does not translate to experience in doing and creating, which is what is required in the workforce, and slow moving systems that want to control content within courses, meaning that often courses are out of date, especially when it comes to digital, mobile, and emerging technologies. This is why David is so smart here, to host this course outside of the usual course builds and have the students each term help to add to and navigate the quickly changing ecosystem of mobile learning.
As new teachers graduate and enter the workforce, joining the older and more experienced ones, the clash between innovative and traditional styles of teaching are clearly exposed. As a new teacher myself, I had only one technology based course during my undergrad, however I was fortunate enough to have a professor in other courses that focused on learning technologies. Teachers who have graduated years before did not have the privilege of taking such courses. Well anchored in their traditional ways, it is much more difficult to tackle reinvention. I believe the pandemic clearly unveiled the lack of skills and knowledge teachers have when it comes to technology (not all of course!). Therefore, in my opinion, the reinvention of the educational industry can not be solely done from the inside. We need teachers who are motivated to learn and evolve but we also need more agile entities to assist them in the process.
Those outside
Those outside entities do exist that are creating tools to create magic in the classroom with edtech, but it is not so easy as build it and they will come. Marketing those tools to teachers and school boards, and finding the right individual to approve things for a given school board is an art and career unto itself, and then you have to get the teachers to invest the time into learning the tech, with time that teachers don’t often have, and next of course comes the time for them to then implement that into their curriculum. I think about my friend Nicole Kang, as I write this, and her educational platform, Elementari: https://storytogo.ca/2021/01/elementari-a-sustainable-funding-case-study/ https://elementari.com/ They’ve finally received some funding after years of building on blood, sweat, and tears and struggling to make ends meet in the process.
This is an interesting question, and in my humble opinion, I think that we are overdue for education to be disrupted.
Formal education and educational institutions have been broken for sometime now, due to notions of control, power, and ego governing over the system. These act in opposition to learning, education, innovation, and student wellbeing. As was aptly written in this week’s reading, “Our current systems are a relative drag on their dreams.” I know this is how I’ve felt when met with control, power, and ego, posing an opposition to my desire to learn and innovate in a healthy way. With mobile, open education, and DIY tutorials growing and presenting new opportunities to learn, I think that the institutions need to revaluate their values and what truly represent positive, healthy and meaningful learning and educational environments, as learners now have a choice. I aim to be a part of that disruption with the goal of giving learners a healthier, more innovative, positive, and equitable way to learn, both from within and outside of the formal institutions of learning.
I love that you mentioned a re-evaluation of values, as that’s something that has been on my mind a lot lately. The question that keeps bouncing around in my mind, is whether educational institutions truly employ/demonstrate values beyond efficiency and longevity? I think this is the baseline challenge when it comes to a reinvention of formal education, as it often falls to the individuals within the system to act in alignment with their (changing) value systems – which may not be reflected across the broader system they are a part of. As such, I think your points about a disruption of the power systems within educational institutions are critical as a precursor to any real change within large, slow, bureaucratic systems.
Beautifully articulated, Cassie. Sadly, education and educational institutions have long been rive with bullies. This shouldn’t be the case in education, as it not only blocks pathways forward and acts as a barrier to learning and innovating, but it also creates an unsafe and unhealthy environment for students, staff, and faculty. There are exceptions, of course, that act as beacons of hope that change is possible. My colleague Lori and I got to do a workshop for Northern College on Wellness in Learning Communities the other week, which provided us with a beacon of hope, as the people from the college were so amazingly receptive and positive. Left the whole session feeling refreshed.
External and internal motivations for change in the education industry are clearly understood, are undergoing redefinition, and are being shaped by some serious competitors and collaborators in Canada. Traditional, not-for-profit universities are exploring profitable education arms with offerings that suit the schedules of busy professionals in need of new skills or new fields of interest due to automation.
Continuing education schools are not new, but their offerings and marketing are becoming more sophisticated. The Chang School for Continuing Education at Ryerson University in Ontario, for example, offers bootcamps designed specifically for the working professional, tailored to specific outcomes, delivered in short bursts (e.g. I completed a 4-day Data Science Bootcamp), and ideally paid for by employers (https://www.ryerson.ca/trsm-careers/bootcamp/). They are counting on the quality of the offering to be attractive to employers to pay high tuition fees for a week-long course to upskill employees. Bootcamps are intended to be a profit generator for the institution that helps the university increase investment in the development of similar courses and research into areas like virtual serious games. Certificates, digital badges, and networked connections to employers are all parts of the experience whether instruction is in-class or online. Ryerson not only has a profit arm with bootcamps, but also believes in the transformational improvements of pedagogy through education technology, which often irks the traditional education researcher who cannot maintain the pace of technology changes in peer-reviewed papers. This is clearly an institution that understands the friction between non-profit, publicly-funded education and industry partner needs and the value of collaboration.
eCampus Ontario is another example of a not-for-profit centre of excellence that is interested in the progressive change of teaching and learning through technology. The Micro-certification Principles and Framework (https://www.ecampusontario.ca/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/2020-02-03-microcertifications-en.pdf) was collaboratively designed by a group of colleges, universities, employers, and public agencies to create a common micro-certification ecosystem in Ontario. Traditional educational institutions are working with employers to ensure that students and employees gain recognized, on-demand skills and retraining. The value proposition of collaboration is again clearly understood in the development of this microlearning and employability strategy.
I think with the situation concerning Covid 19 and emergency teaching, pressure has been placed on both teacher and students to adapt to the new “digital class-scape”. With it, pressures has been placed on the educational workforce and student participation to meet expectations of functioning adequately in this new environment. The once working moving parts with face- to- face teaching have now been transformed into some other beast of a classroom. The educational tribology no longer works as effective, which means new forms of administrative support, teaching pedagogy, and social interaction need to be explored. Being mobile combined with one’s participation and motivation is essential in succeeding in this “digital class-scape”.
Looking though the Tribology lens, the reduced friction between the buyer and the seller requires a lot of work and effort on the sellers part. In order for the entire industry to reinvent itself it would require much reduction of work on the part of the individual teacher, unless a frictionless interaction, or technology, is invented.
When I think about easing the ‘friction” between a buyer and a seller Amazon comes to my mind first. The work to reduce the friction is at almost a zero for the buyer. Say I want to buy a dongle for my laptop. I could get in my car, drive 10 minutes to London Drugs, mask on, sanitize, pick out that dongle so that I can add a second screen to increase my work flow, and can’t forget that Instagram worthy desk set-up. Instead, I open the Amazon app, find the dongle, click “Buy Now” and continue watching Netflix, while I also consider taking up chess. While I’m binging Netflix, a worker at Amazon, maybe in Toronto, hustles to find this dongle, puts it in a box large, tapes it up, puts a tracking sticker on. It get’s driven to YYZ and flies across Canada to YVR overnight, gets sorted, put in a van, and a driver attempts to deliver it my apartment, but my buzzer is broken. They call, I miss it because I’m making a recipe I saw on Tasty for lunch, I notice the missed call and run down. I missed the package. That tired worker rushes back at the end of their shift to make sure that I get that package in 24 hours.
That’s a lot of work for an entity to go through compared to me just going to London Drugs for 20 minutes. Incredibly convenient for me, a moving complex puzzle for Amazon.
From an elementary music teacher perspective, I feel like we as teachers are the sellers, and the students are our buyers. In order for students to learn efficiently there should be as little friction as possible for them in their lesson, and in their ability to complete their school work. In my experience setting up an online environment from my students required some set-up on my end, but most of the work was teaching my students to become “literate” in the Google environment. How to use Google Slides, Google Docs, how to use the text box and scribble tools, and not accidentally deleting slides. It took a few weeks of work before all the friction was minimized.
An issue is the assumption that this generation of student is already literate with their devices, sure they may be able to use iPads and play games, but they can’t necessarily use a word processor or spreadsheet effectively. That is where we teachers come in and have to teach them the “digital” literacy before we can all fully embrace an open learning system.
That being said, I do have a colleague who sends out his own choral arrangements for his choir classes via YouTube. His students then use these to learn their individual part in the song. After watching a performance a few years back I spoke with one of his students who is fully embracing this method. She told me story about how she and some friends wanted to make some money busking one afternoon. They took out their devices, listened to their pieces, had a short a short sing through, and then performed for the afternoon; having fun and making some fun money in the process. Using their devices they learn their music quickly and efficiently, allowing for a more productive, and enjoyable, rehearsal and performance.
To reiterate, for the time being I do not see the education industry being able to reinvent itself because that would require too much extra work on the part of the teacher in order set a new trend. Furthermore, influencing the whole industry follow, and have the student already be literate. Can a new more agile entity disrupt and take the mantle? I think so, but that take a lot of money for research and development, and by that time, the ship might have sailed.
Hi Mark,
I enjoyed reading your Amazon example and how you discerned that to reduce friction for the buyer, the seller essentially suffers. Like you, I work hard to reduce friction for students. A philosophical question pops up though. Should teachers make learning smoother, and is doing is actually good for students? When I use technology to reduce friction for my students, I wonder if I make them learn helplessness and if I am teaching them to be less resilient in the face of challenges. When students forget to take their work home, they just accept that fact rather than getting a peer to take a photo of the assignment and text it to them. Are we and technology to blame for this?
As many of my classmates have pointed out, I think the education industry can successfully change, but that it will take both internal and external motivations to do so. For those of us who work in education research, we are constantly trying to explore ways in which the education industry can change. I work as a research assistant at Washington State University’s Department of Teaching and Learning. A project I am currently working on is exploring students’ use of deliberative argumentation in a large lecture biology courses, with a broader goal of determining ways to encourage scientific thinking in intro STEM courses (For more information our Award Abstract #1822490 is available online at the National Science Foundation).
While talking with my colleagues, we discovered a large reason some of us got involved with this project is because of our interest in education’s “leaky-gut” syndrome, and specifically in STEM majors. By “leaky gut” syndrome we mean the higher dropout rate of students in introductory STEM courses that serve as barriers to graduating with a degree in STEM. We hope to be able to discover more effective teaching methods to make the introductory STEM courses more approachable for students that are interested in STEM, but that don’t have prior STEM experience beyond that which is required by the school’s admission requirements. In my team’s case, our motivation for this change is internal, and we are actively trying to facilitate this change, but to have it enacted on a university, state, or national level will likely require external motivation. With increasingly accessible online courses and certificate programs in STEM fields (i.e. coding, GIS, computer science) that are designed for the common layperson to work their way through, higher education will have to change if it wishes to compete. In cases like this, change may start from within the education industry, but likely will only be applied industry-wide when economic survival of the system necessitates it. As one of the people hoping to incite change in the US education system, I can only hope that more agile entities will arise soon to spur on that change.
As Ying mentioned so well below, there are a few huge barriers to educational change happening from within. Technology is changing so fast that it is almost impossible to keep up. We have teachers, admin, support staff, district staff, government staff and elected officials who started their career in a time when satellite dishes were the size of a swimming pool and computers were just starting to gain momentum. The amount of change over their careers is huge, but I do still believe we all have a responsibility as professionals to maintain a level of competency with changes in both education and technology. There is so much resistance to change when teachers are reaching the end of their careers, it is counter intuitive to what is happening in society. Teachers will often ask new staff to align themselves with “how we do things at ____ school”, taking the wind out of the sails of new, innovative teachers – this is the friction that is slowing the change.
If change is to happen in the education system, it will need to be a blend of internal, teacher-led initiatives and external, technology and program development. In the future I see increased options in the public school system, similar to what we are seeing now in BC: some in person, some blended in person/online and a variety of online programs. If teachers, government and private tech and program development companies work together to support changes (to structure and funding) to the education system, we may actually be able to achieve a school structure that supports our new BC curriculum.
“…taking the wind out of the sails of new, innovative teachers – this is the friction that is slowing the change.” – brilliant. So eloquently said, Meg.
I will discuss this question thinking specifically about Canada and its public school system. There are many things within the education system that resist evolution, but the two big ones are the lack of finances and the lack of passionate/qualified faculty.
The lack of finances already impedes the quality of education now, so how can current funding support the large innovative changes that we want? Besides technology itself costing money (e-text are still expensive, mobile learning platforms have subscription fees), the changes to existing physical and staffing infrastructure to support these innovations would be significant as well. There is also the disparity problem from district to district. For some districts, it is more reasonable to spend existing funds on aid programs to support lower income families than to be at the cutting edge of teaching and learning. There is some hope within private schools, particularly ones with a long history (ex. St. George’s), as these have large funds to work with and have a robust alumni community to collect donations from. In addition, private schools answer heavily to parents as their continued operation depend on enrollment. Private schools have this extra push that public schools do not, to always be at the forefront. Could this be why SpaceX has progressed so rapidly when compared to NASA? I considered whether private schools, or online schools would push public schools to change, however, there are just not that many private/online schools around when compared to public schools, and public schools are free to attend, so there will always be a healthy supply of students to attend the public schools.
The drivers of change in education really are the teachers; they are the worker bees. No matter how innovative an administrative team is at a school, or even our own ministry, change will not occur unless all teachers are on board. Sadly, our current public school system does not enable schools to hire the most passionate and qualified of teachers. We still rely on a seniority system because we value teacher rights much more than the growth of our students. We like to say that we put students first, and many individual teachers do, but our system does not and our union certainly does not. We do not pair teachers to subjects that they are best suited for, we let teachers with seniority choose what they want to teach, a method which enables complacency and pushes difficult courses on new teachers. We do not let go of teachers who are incompetent and they stay in the system well into their retirement. And so we have a significant number of teachers who resist change and change is so difficult for teachers that it took a pandemic to get some to learn how to use online conferencing and to look into alternative teaching strategies. BC’s new curriculum for Gr. 10-12 came out in 2017. It has been three years. How many schools are implementing competency based learning and assessment right now?
I do not think Canada’s current public school system is capable of reinventing itself on its own. With current hiring practices, a good number of the passionate, go-getter teachers will look elsewhere to innovate. Who would want to spend 3 years as a TOC, only to land temporary contracts, and then when they finally get into a school, only to teach 5 different preps in large classes that have many students with IEP’s? Then of course after working 6 years, there may be a district-wide layoff. How can anyone think about reinventing when they are struggling to do their best in an under-funded system? Public schools will continue to do what they do unless another entity starts to pull students away by graduating students who are more desirable by universities and the workplace. This entity will have to be affordable and reduce friction for both teachers and students.
Ting – you are spot on and echo many of the thoughts I’ve been thinking since reading the Week 1 info last night! Our current HR system in public schools in Bc does not ensure that the most innovative, passionate teachers are in the right spot. Too many spots – even TOC spots – are taken by teachers in their “retirement years.” And, when these new, innovative teachers come into new schools on their temporary contracts, they are too often forced to fit into the box that already exists at the school.
Who is responsible for making the change and ensuring the best people are in each position? What structures need to change? How can the union be updated to reflect this? Maybe there needs to be an upgrading requirement every so many years. Any change will be so controversial for teachers wanting to stay in their box ….
Great post!
Meg
Ying – I’m so sorry I got your name wrong! I just can’t seem to figure out how to edit it…
No worries! I just got a new laptop and the keyboard is so different from my old ones. I am making typos frequently as well!
Can the education industry successfully reinvent itself from the inside, or will it be disrupted by new, more agile entities?
I believe the education industry will reinvent itself only after more agile entities that threaten to replace it. I am going to be so bold as to suggest that in every instant where education systems were reinvented, it was external forces that brought about the critical innovations in teaching and learning. Writing was first a tool of economic trade before it was employed by a few forward thinkers to revolutionize the traditions of science, civics and communication. Later structured education systems were introduced to societies across the known world from the satchels of missionaries and the doctrines of armies carrying transformative philosophical and religious ideas. Much later, industrial innovations in paper, ink, eyeglasses and capitalism transformed both production methods and the demand for books – which in turn set the stage for the Gutenberg press – a disruption never intended to revolutionize education, but it did!
Today the very innovations we are exploring in this course, such as 5G, Big Data, Cloud Computing, BlockChain and AI, are poised to change everything about our current way of life in the same fashion that the Gutenberg Bible (that is to say books in general) upset the medieval world and brought about the Renaissance.
I agree with Dr. Vogt, “data and mobility (and the tech that makes mobile learning possible) will inevitably reinvent learning.” Like every other industry facing these agents-of-change the education systems, we know today can either adapt or be replaced. This seems especially apparent in light of the turbulent times facing our most enduring institutions like universities and libraries. Online learning is no longer a novelty. At the very least, it is a safety net for our institutions of learning. Ideally, it is a catalyst for exciting new transformations in education.
This all reminds me of 2001: A Space Odyssey.
I agree with your ideas, and it seems an inexorable way of change because technology interferes with learning methods and with how knowledge is retained. Students’ engagement with learning platforms certainly, alters how to get knowledge and how teachers can help them. This knowledge on demand and right on time requires a revolution inside out education industry.
“Whether the education industry can successfully reinvent itself from the inside, or will it be disrupted by new, more agile entities?”
I’m going to start this post off with one quick word into my thinking: when I think of education industry, I am thinking (and discussing in this post) about the public education system that I am a part of. Want to throw that out there first… and that I’m playing this off the cuff and just going straight with my thoughts (ie: no research, just the coffee I drank fueling me).
Analogy time: NASA (this is probably not the best analogy as it sounds like David probably knows A TON more about this subject than me, but I’m going with it). NASA has done some pretty amazing things in history; though, as with most things in the US, it tended to need an adversary (a doppelganger dare I say?) to push itself to strive for its advancements in space travel and exploration. But, in more recent times, it has relinquished its control of exploration, especially manned, to private corporations. Why? In my head, one of the main factors would be cost; NASA is a governmental organization and uses tax payers’ money to finance its endeavours. In times of stress within a Nation, it is hard to justify exploring new worlds while there are basic needs within the country that are not being met. Hence the move towards private corporations pushing the advancement in manned space exploration; they have the economic means to pay for these endeavours and will most definitely benefit from any discoveries that are made.
The education industry (again, public education industry), in my view, has done remarkably well in moving towards reinventing themselves; BC’s new curriculum has opened up learning where it can happen ubiquitously and more organically, allowing the student to learn in ways that they feel are poignant. But it still has basic needs that need to be met and needs to justify its spending to the tax-paying public. As we move forward, I believe that private corporations will become more integral in the reinvention of education (kind of like now… MS Teams meeting anyone?) as they have the means to pay for it and will benefit from these advancements as students leave the education system and join the work force… and their companies. Do I think children will be going to school in The Oasis, like in Ready Player One? I’m not sure… but it is a great example of how a private corporation advances the educational system to where everyone can access it, no matter their location or circumstances. Now, as long as we all don’t end up in The Matrix…
Focusing on just one, but a crucial piece of the current education “industry”, I have considered “will schools be able to reinvent themselves or will they be disrupted by newer, more agile entities?” I think it’s helpful to look at some of the underlying features/themes of the school system which influence both the ability for schools to be agile, and perhaps the challenge (currently) of anyone hoping to disrupt the existing system.
Schools are cyclical, educators have the wonderful opportunity to “reinvent” themselves on a yearly basis, and have built in breaks to “reset”. The best educators are steadfast in their commitment to “lifelong learning”. During these breaks, there is great opportunity for reflection, review and adjustment. Currently, both educators and their institutions have more direct access to rich feedback from their students which if harnessed, can offer potential for change and growth. This also means that schools have the opportunity to iteratively adjust, evolve and grow to meet changing needs.
Schools have memory, and schools form habits, the culture of a school is critical to its ability to be agile, or sustain meaningful change. This means that the longer a school has been around, the more likely that the families sending their children are looking for a specific goal or purpose, that the administrators clearly understand what is expected of them from their “customers”, and the educators supporting the school are comfortable delivering what they have in the past.
Schools are more than just places to learn, they are also places to come together, places to share, and they have their own community. These things can be valued independently of the type and quality of education offered, and agile schools will be able to place emphasis on these features as they adapt. I believe that participants in fully mobile, open learning will still place value in shared spaces for collaboration and community.
Schools perform a “handoff” of their students, either to the next grade within the school, or to the next school, or eventually to the larger world where ideally students have been best prepared for what they face. Many educators and their institutions take this responsibility very seriously, and this can both be fuel for positive change as well as passionate resistance to change. Schools want to know that when students progress, they will be ready and so there is a tendency to seek approval and evidence from the next stage in the system before making meaningful change at previous stages. It is inherently risky for an existing institution to try something radically different because there is increased uncertainty about “what happens next”. If an institution opens itself up to change, they are taking on and internalizing that risk, and the larger the institution the less likely they are to take large risks as any downside would impact a larger body of learners. Anyone hoping to disrupt the existing system however faces the challenge of trying to “fit in” to the existing system, it’s difficult for any entity to try and offer all levels, and newcomers represent the greatest risk given they don’t have the evidence in their favour “yet”.
I believe that individual access to quality, personalized education will only increase and that we will continue to see both evidence of successful individuals who have bypassed part or all of the current “industry” as well as increasing “legitimization” of alternative paths to mastery. This will put enormous pressure on existing organizations, and will force reflection and re-valuation of why we go to school. However, since schools are cyclical in nature, and the best schools are committed to supporting their students in their pursuit of mastery, I believe that many existing institutions will be able to adapt, though it will be a painful and uncomfortable process and many will simply become irrelevant.
I think it’s first important to narrow down what sector or part of the education industry we’re talking about. Then it would be important to discuss in what way they are trying to reinvent themselves. In fear of over-complicating this question, I’ll look at it simplistically. I’m most familiar with higher education institutions, so if I’m responding from that point of view, I would say yes, they can successfully reinvent themselves from the inside.
I believe it’s how you go about doing it and who you have involved that will determine how successful you are. If all stakeholders are consulted and the culture at the institution is one that is receptive to change (essentially, you have everyone’s buy-in) and values innovation, the institution has the infrastructure, proper technology training and support is in place, a successful reinvention can happen. This is not to say that new more agile entities won’t come along, but their inevitable emergence does not need to mean a stop to the reinvention. If the right stakeholders are involved in the reinvention, a technology team for example, these groups can help bridge the outside to the inside and allow the task to remain successful. So, the emergence of these new entities can be anticipated and the reinvention can shift to allow it’s integration. This causes it to be less of a disruption and more of welcomed anticipated addition.
You make a good point Natalie when you that what sector of the education industry we’re discussing will change the discussion. I was thinking as I read through the posts before yours that there is a big difference between discussing grade school (be it local or private/International school), and tertiary, graduate school, or further professional training and development. I was going to write a stand alone post, but I might as well leave my thoughts here since they relate to yours.
I work at a private international school in Hong Kong that is considered to be ‘innovative’. We have highly trained staff who generally are excited to learn and try out new things, we have budget set aside to purchase equipment, software, and licenses, and we are positioned in a country whose culture values one-up-man-ship and the idea of getting out ahead of the crowd. Having said that, dealing with three months of cancelled face to face lessons during the pandemic has reminded me that large ships full of passengers turn slowly, and EVERYONE has an opinion regarding how the rudder should be manned.
Our school went through several iterations of ‘guidelines for online learning’, as I’m sure many schools did. As an ETEC student, I was very thankful that I had designed several units of study for Drama that used technology and explored how I might use digital spaces to allow my students to collaborate and create art. I felt fairly solid as I embarked upon my first week of online classes, despite our admin overhauling the expectations several times. I had colleagues however that were far more stressed. This stress was compounded when, within a few days of conducting online classes, and based on the immediate (and unhappy) feedback of some of our parents, the expectations were drastically changed again. Although pedagogically, what most of us were supplying in terms of online learning activities was sound, the message was ‘When I walk into my child’s room, I want to see a live video class happening with the teacher giving a proper lesson.’ Thus, mandated live sessions were instituted. In terms of re-inventing itself in this time of need, my school was unable to turn the rudder to allow us to catch the best current.
The Education Industry, in my opinion, has always been somewhat held back by the need stakeholders feel to control and direct learning. Society wants to know that children are being educated ‘properly’, and that often means through a process that they themselves recognise. Those of us who work in education also often feel a need to ensure ‘quality control’, by limiting the means by which students learn, or curate knowledge. Higher educational institutions want to ensure that there are certain, pre-set, benchmarks that are reached in order to control the flow of information as well as pupils through hallowed halls, and I freely admit that I walk amongst them at times.
I suppose I’m asking the question; ‘With so many stakeholder hands on the rudder, can the ship really change course?’ and therefore, ‘Will the ship require an outside influence to force a direction change?’
I think it’s maybe a bit problematic to start with when we refer to education as an industry. An industry implies a production or manufacturing of sorts and to my mind I immediately think of a product that can be mass-produced and then sold in some way or another to be profitable or at the very least sustainable. All words that sound very impersonal. I guess therein lies the contradiction for me, this is what education has become to a large extent for the administrators and the government bodies managing the “industry” but to those stakeholders within the system (the teachers, students and parents) I think a different view is taken. Those stakeholders are more concerned with the individual mind and its growth than with spreadsheets of paper costs. I therefore think if we want to refer to education as an industry in its formal definition then it’s a very broken industry in many ways as the stakeholders of that industry are often at opposing ends of an argument. Can change thus be inflicted from within? I have my doubts… I think internal stakeholders (educators) might want to instigate certain changes that administrators are often opposed to and vice versa which ultimately prevents many initiatives from taking place and curtails future change. I therefore think, that any changes we will continue to see in the education arena will be as a result of external changes that will force adaption rather than much internal drivers for change from within.
You end your post with something that I think is currently being reflected in education today and supports your argument about forced adaptation. Due to self-isolation and working from home, teachers that have been thrown into using technology to help with student learning. Some of these teachers may not have done so given the current situation. This external change has forced adaptation with regards to technology integration and the skills that have been learned and developed through this experience may influence in-person classes moving forward.
However, I do also feel that change can come from within. BC’s new curriculum is an example of that; there has been a shift in focus from content to competencies. I was also recently introduced to Maloney’s Accelerating Diffusion of Innovation which argues that once 16% of people have adopted an innovation, it moves from being an idea to having social proof which can then influence a larger majority of people to adopting the change. This concept is represented in a bell curve graph which I would recommend searching for and having a look… it’s quite interesting.
Can the industry successfully re-invent itself?
Several factors would need to fall into place before the re-invention can take place. I am reminded of when I was starting out teaching a math class. I wanted to create a growth mindset, a collaborative community, and I was met with apprehension. By the time students had reached grade 10 math, they could not transition from lectures and problems to an entire class of problem-solving. The students did not want to struggle to find the answer. They were uncomfortable in their own skin. I believe for the education industry to be re-invented, it must start at the beginning. At some point in student’s learning, they have developed a fear of failure and stopped trying. I believe it is at that point when a student’s mentality shifts would be a great moment to introduce mobile learning.
Currently, as an online teacher, I experience friction with the face-to-face teachers in my school district. Some believe I am going to replace them and reduce the numbers in school. For the education industry to shift, the first step would be to include a blended model where all teachers can experience a mobile learning model. There will be friction from not wanting to adapt, but smaller steps will promote collaboration and not opposition.
I believe the two most important areas to address are timing and careful and thoughtful implementation. The implementation will anticipate but manage disruptions, and I do think the education industry is primed to change now that we are entering a post-COVID era.
Hi Kristin,
I go back and forth about from which direction change must occur. Like you, I agree that it must come from the beginning, and that is how my school has approached adopting the new BC curriculum. We started with he 8’s, then 9’s, and worked our way up to the 12’s so that no senior student, who has spent all their formal education learning predominantly in a traditional manner, has to suddenly switch to a new way of learning. On the other hand, sometimes I think that the change has to be from the end. High schools operate under the mantra “to prepare students for post-secondary”, and so if universities do not teach outside of lectures, or give exams that are not predominantly multiple choice, it is difficult to justify why high schools should move towards competency based learning, especially to parents. Perhaps the mandate should come from post-secondary institutions, and then the changes be enacted from the beginning.
The reality of today’s diverse classrooms is that students at different levels, with different backgrounds and interests, receive the same lessons. Teachers are boxed in by grades, class sizes, or the invisible hand of assessment nudging them to teach to the average. “Schools as we know them are obsolete It’s wonderfully constructed,” says Sugata Mitra. “It’s just that we don’t need it anymore.” Mitra is a professor of educational technology at Newcastle University, best known for his “Hole in the Wall” experiment which he discussed in his famous TED talk. He was addressing an idea that comes up from time to time, that education is broken and needs fixing. What critics of schools respond to are low outcomes from schools, and low math scores are the top of the list. Mitra’s point is that it isn’t broken, but rather that we’re using an old model, one that was developed to train students for roles in factories in the industrial era of the past, yet we are expecting results training students for what is needed for jobs of today. “Well that’s today, but we don’t even know what the jobs of the future are going to look like”.
So now on to the question of “Can the education industry successfully reinvent itself from the inside, or will it be disrupted by new, more agile entities?”. I believe that it will not be a reinvention but rather an evolution.
Before Covid-19 I would have added that there would be no revolution, instead an evolution but with Covid-19 I am not so sure anymore. Covid-19 would change a lot of things faster and education is no exception. I quote David Vogt, “You don’t need to look very far to see how much the opportunity horizon for learning technologies has expanded in a very short time with the current pandemic. When the virus is contained that horizon will not contract; I predict it will continue to grow significantly. For example, look at all the shut-down schools and universities that are learning to serve their learners in new ways – physical classrooms will be repopulated, but the blend of how learning happens is likely changed forever. Look at all the shut-down schools and universities that are learning to serve their learners in new ways – physical classrooms will be repopulated, but the blend of how learning happens is likely changed forever.”
Therefore mobile learning, open learning, big data and the various technology innovations such as VR/AR/MR are all part of this evolution.
Ram;
Your comment about our use of an out-dated system meant to ready pupils for factory life reminded me of this short film. As an arts teacher, it resonates with me in terms of formal education stifling imagination, but it applies here as well. Your comments about the need to find ways to blend learning in order to evolve had me nodding our head. Education is a bit of a slow-moving creature at times, but it IS moving! I too think that this creature needs a little outside prodding to encourage it along.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQjtK32mGJQ
Can the education industry successfully reinvent itself? I believe in order to answer this question one would have to consider how to define reinvent. How drastically would the education industry need to change to be considered reinvented? Even looking at the education industry in Canada there is a wide array of perspectives and approaches to education. I can speak from my personal experiences within the education industry in Manitoba. In my opinion, education has changed in some ways, there has been modifications and adaptions to some ways of doing things, especially during a pandemic, however I would not consider these changes to have reinvented education. Don’t get me wrong, there has been innovation in education but in my experience the innovation that I have seen has come from private companies that have developed tools that then infiltrate the public education realm. I have seen change come about in education when it is needed, and others following suit in order to compete. I believe that new entities will be the driving force that will force education from the inside to makes similar changes in order to keep up.
What I am unsure about is how this education will be available to everyone. I imagine new entities disrupting education that initially, would only be available to those who could afford it. This would cause large amounts of friction within education and divide the haves and the have nots. Here is where I get stuck. Would public education need to adopt what the new entities have to offer? What would happen if they didn’t?
I agree that it would be challenging to define a “reinvention” of education as it’s already such a broad realm with incredible diversity from one to another. Perhaps as well, that diversity of options reflects the diversity of both needs and outcomes for families and students. Perhaps that can already be considered a sign of a healthy “industry” capable of adapting.
To build on your comment about access and equity, I think another challenge is the disparity in access to information about outcomes, and whether a family or individual is able to have the time to invest in understanding what would be better for the learner and make an informed choice about the style of education they pursue. In this respect, a healthy public system would be there to analyze the research and make informed choices, but I wonder if it’s true that a public system will always lag behind a private entity in terms of agility (for better or worse)?
When I think about friction and mobile learning, I automatically think about teachers. Not all teachers, but there are many who slow the process of change. I remember being on a team at my old school when we were going through a redesign. I was ready to commit to the largest change, even if it meant that we may fail, while there was other staff who wanted no change at all. Needless to say, I was quite frustrated over this stalemate, although the change eventually came.
Due to this experience I would say “No” to the question “Can the education industry successfully reinvent itself from the inside, or will it be disrupted by new, more agile entities?” However, with COVID-19 and the change it has put on learning I would have to change my answer to “Maybe”. Through this experience I have seen teachers who managed to get student cell phones banned from the school, just last year, change their entire teaching where students needed to use those same phones to complete lessons.
There are also the other entities within the education system that need a willingness to change, such as ministries. As we see from province to province, change can take a long time. Here in Alberta they were developing an new curriculum, only to have the next government want to change it, so it is still a work in progress. When I was in BC, I remember teaching social studies 7 in my practicum, and it was the exact same as when I was a student. Furthermore, there are also the parents, they also must be willing to accept changes. When Alberta came out with a new social studies curriculum I had a lot of parents who struggled with the fact that there was less of a history component to it, which they didn’t like because that wasn’t how they were taught. I am sure a move towards mobile learning would be even more of a struggle as the changes would be substantially different from their own learning.
On your last point, I wonder if mobile learning would open up the door to teaching different content? If a class moves away from a traditional classroom setting into something new and different, perhaps there would be less pushback from parents about the content changing because the way students are learning isn’t recognizable to them? Of course, perhaps not, but an interesting idea.
Yes, that is an interesting point. Maybe if the course is so unrecognizable, they wouldn’t relate it to what they went through. Great point!
[Originally posted by Jon in May 2018]
Wikipedia defines “Tribology” as “…the science and engineering of interacting surfaces in relative motion…” Interaction between elements in movement. Friction causes wear and in Education, there is a lot of it. First of all, teachers are getting worn by the continual addition to their work and the lack of support. The plate is not bigger and the stuff we put in it is overflowing. From demanding administration, to bigger groups, to increasing learning disabilities, to frustrated and hard-to-please parents and younger burned-out teachers, the system is ill. Something has to happen. I believe learning and Education are and will be in constant movement. In our era, we see our students coming with new tools, tools they learn and discover the potential with pleasure. They learn with pleasure. Shouldn’t we use that energy in learning? Mobile learning offers the opportunity of redesigning new courses in new ways. It does open the time spectrum for the teacher, as they are working on their own schedule and it opens to the learner as well, as they learn on their schedule. These tools are also a lot more powerful and efficient than they use to be. People are looking for experienciation nowadays. Mobile learning offers opportunities in that direction. I think tribology as yet to be discovered and explored for a better experience in learning.
Now, about reinventing itself, Education is blooming and presenting itself with a need for a new perspective. Will Education become something else or reinvent itself completely? There is a lot of unnecessary weight around the system that needs to be shed. New, and more agile, options are presenting themselves. Completely normal as the world is growing. For example, OS are improving continually, and offer multiple, easier, options for learning and better living. Data becomes really important around our lives. Another example, mode of prensentation are upgrading regularly. When I was in school, books and overhead projector were great technologies to have in class. When I started teaching, Powerpoint was the next big thing to use, and the SmartBoard arrived after. Today, students have multiple devices, all connected and they are author of the world. Opportunities for learning are everywhere, from MOOCS, to iTunes U, to Open Universities,… to YouTube! The learner can choose is option. Even the largest world universities are offering courses online. Mobile devices open the doors to the world. Education is already reinventing itself without us knowing it.
[Originally posted by Lisa H. in May 2018]
I believe that the education industry will be recreated over time in the manner that David describes in his description of tribology, but it will be less reinvention by design and more the natural selection of surviving practices when new forms of friction are applied to it. These forces will take three forms: top-down pressure from the government who are looking for the best value for the tax payers dollar, the demand of learners to fully integrate their mobile/socially connected lives into their educational lives, and the ‘expiring’ – or grandfathering – of those who seek to seek to maintain the monolithic status quo of the educational system. The British Columbia K-12 world is buzzing over the new curricula and its shift away from specific learning objectives. There is a good deal of legitimate concerns over the manner that the Ministry of Education has conducted this change, but the loudest opponents so far are those who see any disruption of their own concept of teaching and learning as threatening. Governments ultimately call the shots, so over time teachers must adapt. At some point, education will be forced to integrate socially mediated mobility and open data because the critical mass of learners live their lives that way. Finally, the teaching world will stop attracting and credentializing those who wish to validate their own educational paths by perpetuating 20th Century learning conventions. They are the gatekeepers of the friction in school settings.
Before COVID-19, I would have agreed 100% behind the three forces driving change identified in this post (top-down pressure from the government, demand of learners, and grandfathering of resistance to change). However, due to COVID-19, the world, including education systems, were able quickly transform and adapt to a more mobile and socially distant mode. Of course, some of the changes will not be permanent, but it shows that established systems have the ability and resources to re-invent itself. It really made me reflect on what are the real factors driving change. If systems can be re-invented this quickly, how come it was developing so slowly before? How come we needed the extra push from a global pandemic? To me, it looks like the context of a global pandemic has removed some of the “friction” that previously existed regarding mobile education as it became a need rather than a supplement.
[Originally posted by Susan Miller in May 2018]
I like @cbrumwell ‘s metaphor of evolving systems by natural selection, and @guinan2 ‘s analogy with equilibrium in chemical and physical states. This has got me thinking that natural selection processes can go on in an apparently stable system, and the changes will be gradual and barely noticeable over eons, which I think is how you could describe the current/traditional education system—since Aristotle’s time there have been gradual incremental changes, but if he came back to teach in a conventional classroom now, he would probably see much that was familiar to him, and be able to adapt quite quickly to the current environment. Even the moveable type press would have only been an extension of the technology of literacy he would already be familiar with.
But digital communications technologies make it possible to combine the local with the global via multiple media platforms in ways that lead to emergent forms which weren’t previously possible or even thinkable, and can lead to forms of teaching/learning which wouldn’t be recognizable to Aristotle. This represents a genuine disruption of the steady-state equilibrium of the system. So what if, instead of natural selection, it is more like Stephen Jay Gould’s (admittedly controversial but increasingly validated) theory of “punctuated equilibrium”, which is where typically steady-state systems experience periods of rapid evolution? This seems to better describe the kind of change that is heading towards the education system, in my opinion.
You could even extend Gould’s analogy to describe the growing division between those educators “who wish to validate their own educational paths by perpetuating 20th Century learning conventions” (from @Craig B.), and those who embrace the new technologies as an example of cladogenesis (how a species divides into two) in this model.
Having said that, I’m not sure how this evolutionary metaphor ties in to tribology, except maybe that a theory and practice of friction management applies to steady-state systems but is not necessarily applicable in times of turbulent change.
Also, regarding David’s point about Uber and Airbnb, I wonder if Uber at least is not an example of the new and disruptive so much as it is an example of old-style smash-and-grab capitalism at its worst. Driverless cars might work better as an example of new disruptive innovation.
[Originally posted by Martha W. in May 2018]
Education is the result of the human need/drive to learn. Unfortunately, the education system or idea of education has been determined and controlled by only a small percentage of the human population. What I mean is that there is perhaps much truth to often addressed ideas about the current education system as being severely out-dated as it is based on historical societal structure rather then current. Is this the result of that small percentage who control what the education system is (content/structure/method)? Is it simply based on government control? Much seems to be based on fear of change.
The term Tribology is a new one to me, but the idea itself is one that has been brewing in the thoughts of many educators as we attempt to communicate with current learners within their technology based mediums, while being confined to apply new technologies in old ways, within the ‘box’ of the current education system. Literally handing over the power of learning to the learner, still within a guided context, is the next step within human evolution or the evolution of learning. With increased technological inventions and methods of communication and transactions/interactions occurring in the world outside of education, it seems inevitable that these technologies and exchanges should influence the development and evolution of education. I don’t view this potential growth in education as a result of the education system itself, but rather a continuing developing process created by a balance between external ‘friction’ as well as internal (educational).
[Originally posted by Evan in May 2018]
Learning about a new and interesting term – “tribology” – is a great way to kick off the semester. I’m puzzling over how to bring the term into my day-to-day efforts that discuss optimizing workflows, flattening hierarchies, theory of constraints, cultural change, Dunbar’s number, Conway’s Law, and automation.
For the question at hand, I struggle with the idea that there is one “education industry.” The Uber team was certainly not part of the legacy transportation industry, but at some point they did become part of the transportation industry. I get the point that there are incumbents, but I struggle with seeing the education industry as a single homogenous entity.
Another thread of thinking is how to relate tribology to “The Innovator’s Dilemma.” The incumbent often overlooks (or decides against) a new innovation as it disrupts their existing business/approach. Many organizations are not brave enough to step away from what works and what they know to migrate to a new innovation. Instead, they continue to invest and refine their existing approach, continuing to attempt to optimize, maintain, or perhaps even improve, current / short-term performance and results. With this in mind, I expect that innovation in education will absolutely not be delivered by incumbents. Outsiders with new perspectives, new approaches and a willingness and freedom to experiment and bring together new ideas and ingredients from multiple fields will “uber” the education industry.
One possible path to reinvention will be a re-evaluation of personalization, context, and the role of the teacher. With my clients, I find that many organizations overestimate their level of “uniqueness” and “complexity.” As such, there’s a focus on customizing and tailoring – when instead more benefit could be derived by allocating resources elsewhere. In addition, the customization that is provided is often still not at the level of being personalized – the customization may map to the company, division or team, but does not map to the individual. Some of this overestimation and mis-application of resources could be driven by culture (experimentation and failure are often viewed negatively), some of it could be driven by focusing on answers rather than tools, and some of it could be driven by insufficient prioritization and valuation of work.
[Originally posted by Evan in May 2018]
Very good topics to immerse ourselves into for Week 1! A well rounded look at not just the targeted aspects of mobile education but the complexity of technology (mobile education included) and it’s social impact of tomorrow. I’ve never heard of tribology before, but I was interested in the example given of why corporations exist to eliminate the friction and how the education industry will have challenges reinventing itself from the inside.
This topic alone is at the forefront of my mind regularly. When I’m sitting in after school meetings, listening to some teachers discuss how they think handwriting is a more important skill than coding. The constant FRICTION that is put on everyone within Education- teachers and administrators alike having to meet Ministry criteria in every facet of Education. When I first started out as a teacher, I had some older teachers tell me that if the Educational system was like it is now, they wouldn’t be doing it. Although a bit discouraging to hear as a new professional, I never had enough experience to ever understand, and I didn’t know any other way of how the system looked. As I continue in MET, and as I question my own place in Education periodically, I know that there is a changing of the guard within Education.
We are at the start of an Educational revolution, so to speak, where the Educational methods and delivery are going to be reinvented. Private schools (off and online/Hybrid) will gain further popularity as they will be quicker to meet the growing trends and specialize in targeted areas that public schools are limited in time and resources of achieving. As mentioned, Education has never been a free market like commerce has, but I’m taking the outlook that Educational delivery and the providers Education will be much more diverse down the road.
Respectively, Education is meant to evolve.
We don’t travel to a new city or country, without using our online research skills to navigate prices, view ratings, and often read comments to narrow our choices down before booking and moving forward. Travel Agencies are no longer abundant because various online platforms have given individuals the tools to make their own choices. I think of the TeachersPayTeachers.com website with lessons and units that are offered by teachers. The proven ratings and reviews by other teachers assures what you are purchasing is going to be of value, because so many other teachers have vouched for it. I also think of RateMyProfessors/Teacher website with students who provide information on an instructor for students to utilize. Put these two together, and you can see what tomorrow’s education could be, especially with mobile education in terms of delivering users specifically targeted reviewed Education.
Teachers then only create content that they are strong in delivering, the most effective teachers remain at the top, and the students are getting content delivered from a knowledgeable and perhaps more passionate instructor.
Public education now is viewed as a way for students to get immersed in a multitude of areas and fields so that they can find interest in something they might not have known before. Additionally, I’ve heard teachers say when a student asks, “When am I ever going to need to know this?” with a response of, “You might not ever need to know it. But it’s possible that 1 out of the 30 of you will need to know. So I’m teaching it for that student, and you could be that 1 student…”
[Originally posted by Ryan Dorey in May 2018]
The word tribology relates directly to how things interact with each other. When it comes to big data and mobile technology, I see how private school education has the ability to out maneuver a larger and more immovable system like public education. On the other hand big data is only available to organizations that have the ability to monitor large numbers of students that you find in the public education system. I don’t think it will be private schools that win out in the end. It will be a completely new entity that is able to capture and store the data of millions of students, while at the same time offering them a platform to collaborate using mobile technology. In the end, big data will create the frictionless environment but I think they will still need the credibility of traditional higher education institutions in order to have students buy into the new system.