DISRUPTIVE TECHNOLOGIES IN EDUCATION AND CHALLENGES IN ITS GOVERNANCE

Education 2047 #Blog01 (22 Mar 2020)

Close your eyes, think of these random words and relate them to the environment closest you can imagine:  batch, attendance, time-table, delivery, instructions, test, pass, inspection, examination, result, grade, fail, reject, quality, promotion, detention. A factory is built in your imagination, as these words rattle your head. Right? A stark irony that our education institutions too use similar, if not the same terms.  Yes, our academic institutions are factories that grade humans and pass or fail them. Alas! We humans, the most intelligent organisms on the planet have created a system for education, which sees, admits and processes humans as products or commodity. The content canned in books is pumped into the head of each student as instructions, to be learnt at a pace of the rest of the class. S/he is prompted to regurgitate the same, for being tested against what is there in the books and stamped fit or otherwise for upward mobility on the academic/ professional ladder. Human beings put in rat-race!

With the system in place testing a learner in what he knows (in a handful of subjects that a school and its teachers know) and not recognizing his strengths what he knows no wonder the quality of education is sliding down across the board. The students and their parents agree with it, as do the teachers, administrators and the policy makers. The faculty in the top-notch institutions agree with the deterioration and the same gets echoed by teachers in remote primary schools. If the quality is sinking all across, then something is wrong the way we look at the quality and also why we focus on it. The paradigms have changed in the knowledge era that we are in, yet we use the same lens to check the quality.  The technology is disrupting and in fact, has disrupted education and  rendered the factory model completely out of sync with the times.  But, when did it all begin in India?

Anachronistic Model of Education

On 2 February 1835, Thomas Babington Macaulay enunciated his Minute on Education aimed to reform secondary education on utilitarian lines. The objective was to create “a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern; a class of persons, Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect”. What came about was imposing English as the medium of instruction in secondary education, from the sixth year of schooling onwards, in place of Sanskrit or Persian till then used in the educational institutions supported by the British East India Company. This British policy had a determining the impact two aspects: (i) the content and methodology of what has been and is being taught in Indian educational institutions, and (ii) the medium of instruction through which these have been and continue to be taught. What started almost two centuries ago has perpetuated- to produce armies of drones – starting with clerks, then managers and now coders; all spawned from the instructivist or conformist mould of learning, that split schooling and education into two!

The things remained unchanged largely because there was no technological breakthrough since the printing press in the 15th century that enabled the mass production of books and the rapid dissemination of knowledge. The books came handy in the industrial age, in the form of manuals- basically a prescription to be followed religiously- by workers. The books also came handy to the teachers as repository of knowledge, content for delivery to students, to prepare questions for examinations, and to evaluate the performance of students against the book. Sage-on-the-stage with books, addressing the needs of an industrial society, has been the defining characteristic of the factory model of education.   

Schools in the 20th century were largely supply-driven institutions, primarily to cater to prepare the workforce for the factories and governments. For reasons of large number of education seekers and cost control, schooling remained impersonal, seldom tailored to the needs and skills of each child; in short, there were leashes in the education system. But in recent years, technological breakthroughs have allowed monitoring of each child’s progress individually and to use his/her data of past performance to modify and customize what follows. Yes, the polar-shift has started happening towards a learner-centric system, comes as it with an opportunity and means to unleash the full potential of every child, for the first time in human history.

A Roadmap for Education

“Realizing the full potential of every Indian” goes the vision in the roadmap of Education, that Technology Information, Forecasting & Assessment Council (TIFAC) has laid down. First-ever foresight for Education, ever attempted in India!  This emerged out of the long-term technology perspective plan for the country drawn by TIFAC, Technology Vision 2035 (TV 2035) as a response to the challenges thrown by surging Information Technology across all sectors of socio-economic importance. The time horizon for the Technology Vision 2035 exercise was chosen because it was coinciding with 200 years of Macaulay's Minutes on Education! Naturally, then the exercise would not have been complete without a document on education. More so because "quality education, livelihood and creative opportunities" was identified as one of the prerogatives that the government must assure its citizens. Also throwing weight behind the roadmap, were 11 sectors covered under TV2035- hugely technology centred and verticals by themselves. The growth of technologies in these sectors, their deployment and adoption, would not be effective unless backed by strong, modernized and responsive educational system and hence, a roadmap for education was imperative.

Education is possibly the only sector which leads to new technology and at the same time, gets impacted by new technology. Also, it is the one which faces maximum resistance when it comes to the implementation of technologies and ironically from the teachers who are responsible for producing the change-makers! Therefore, the roadmap from TIFAC looks at education in a much more comprehensive manner not only by focusing on future technologies but also looking at the changes which are getting induced in human behaviours attitudes and inclinations and reasons for learning.  Let’s see the technologies shaping and disrupting education space.

Technologies impacting education in future

All technologies are basically assistive in nature, they augment the capabilities of humans and tremendously expand the resources. When harnessed properly, technologies can significantly improve human lives and make them better citizens of the world. The internet and mobile telephony have disrupted education and rendered it- globalized, democratized, inclusive and affordable.  The books allowed a learner to proceed linearly- forward or backward and thus imposed a restriction. In contrast, each web-page with hyperlinks embedded in it, allows a learner to dive into a new world just like a free roving human mind. The technology thus allows access to what a learner wants instead of books which have been dictating the learners. Let’s catch a glimpse of technologies in the offing, in not such a distant future.   

The ingress of hand-held devices like tablets, mobile phones into the education system is already visible but has to spread to actually unleash the potential of flipped-classrooms and blended-learning in a big way in India. The versatility of tablets will increase further with mobile apps become popular for providing access to educational content, facilitating testing and assessment, supporting management functions, financial transactions- over the internet. The wearable technology will further add to the capabilities of the tablets through wired/ wireless interfaces. Several MOOC providers have already developed their own apps for tablets to allow access to their material on-the-go. This personalization gets further advanced as these hand-held devices allow tracking one’s own performance and improve on learning objectives through learning analytics. Also, gaming and gamification are being supported by these tablets, taking care of the needs of learners in a wholesome manner.   

 

A lot more changes are expected if we push our time-frame by a decade or so. Developments in Artificial Intelligence will allow Natural Language Interpretation and Machine Translation to advance further and reduce the linguistic barriers at least in the written text.  The advances in Internet technologies like Cloud computing, 4G& 5G communications and Mesh Networking, will transform the classrooms on the one hand and make the virtual learning environments less virtual on the other. Modular computers, with flexible screens and context-aware, will make every other panel learner’s desk- smart and almost weightless; access to educational material and performance of educational transactions will be without the use of papers, through haptic interfaces and gestures. The sensation of depth in virtual and tactile experiences for experiential learning will be addressed by volumetric screens and Internet of things. All these technologies will liquidate ‘distance’ in distance education on the one hand, and take conventional education to distant places on the other. Thus, the shift from real classrooms to virtual classrooms, availability of language-neutral books, more engaging game-based experiential learning and highly personalized self-directed education would become common.  With these progressions, MOOCs and remote-labs would get integrated and also mainstreamed as will be game-based learning. Adaptive learning and testing will emerge as a defining characteristic of personalized or learner-directed education that appears to be the future.           

In a slightly distant future but not beyond our horizons, new experiences in education can be foreseen. Real-time translation would liquidate all linguistic barriers and learning would start becoming language neutral. It will be possible to join courses and classes with the medium of instruction losing meaning. Synchronous teaching-learning in any language would be possible. With advances in photonics, computational photography, holography etc. and the emergence of quantum computing, the virtual spaces would start becoming immersive and offer near-real experiences. This would take experiential learning to new heights. In short, all spatio-temporal-lingual concerns in education will be taken care of. As such, it will be possible to enrich the experience by creating virtual artefacts, tools, learning points/ spaces and integrating them in learning processes.  MOOCs will no longer be taken by learners but will emerge at built around a learner’s need and capacity, packed with an immersive experience. Educational walk-throughs allowing learners to have immersive experiences of historical events, remote locations, hostile settings, physical/ chemical/ biological changes etc. will become common. Reputation metrics as a substitute for institutional certifications or degrees may emerge, as education would become A4- “anyone, anytime, anywhere & any language”.

The emergence of technologies like Immersive Virtual Reality (IVR), Artificial Intelligence (AI), Brain-Computer Interface (BCI), Real-time Translation (RT), 3-D Printing and Block-chain (BC) and their combinations are posed to several unthinkable possibilities. Literacy will have to be completely redefined and understood as how noted futurist Alvin Toffler puts it “he illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn and relearn”. With complete control over what is to be learnt by a learner to AI, language barriers liquidated by RT, the learning material and content presented in the form of IVR, assessments powered by BCI, hands-on experience enhanced by 3-D printers experiential and a cover of trust provided by BC, all of them just around a learner- the changes are unimaginable. 

 

The end of teachers, as we know them today is a distinct possibility, at least in higher education, repositioning them as pathfinders, navigators, counsellors and confidants in the service to learners. The books are set to become vestigial for the education system, accelerated by the climate change concerns and this trend also signals the end of reading, writing already threatened by texting! BCI may also hit hard on reading and of course, bypass listening/ speaking. Instant translation of text and speech will end linguistic barriers. Further, “adaptive” systems which will become less and less expensive and more and more widely available, are a pointer to end of grades/ classes, each learner has to struggle through, competing with peers. With all these technologies and of course, an enabling eco-system and policies, education is all set for a complete changeover, with the focus shifting from improving quality (of a product) to unleashing the full potential (of a human). With some technologies on exponential trajectory rather than linear, education is set to be under tremendous pressure and in a state of flux, this, in turn, opens up challenges for governance. 

Future Challenges in Governance 

Education is not just about the intellectual transactions that happen in academic institutions but it has a range of other processes, systems and institutions in its ambit. For this reason, administration, management and governance of systems and institutions in the education sector become extremely important. Administration is essentially about procedures and is therefore important in all public institutions. Unfortunately, the system now in place for administration were designed for an industrial age with layers of bureaucracy to ensure compliances. Owing to the emphasis on normality and routine that tend to maintain the status quo, the systems are bereft of novelty and innovation. Technologies like mobile telephony, cloud, RFID, apps, block-chain etc. can immensely accelerate the pace of administrative actions and make them transparent.

Management of education is the process of planning, organizing, directing and controlling the activities of academic institutions. This is achieved by utilizing human and material resources in a manner so as to effectively and efficiently accomplish the functions of teaching, research, training and extension work. A great deal of management functions is being done using technology, aided and accelerated by the internet. Communicating, sharing, archiving and retrieval of information has become so fast and dependable that most management functions are prone to automation promising speed, fairness and transparency.

Block-chain technology that is taking the financial sector by storm is already tipped to take away the offices of Registrar and their equivalents in schools and colleges.   If the internet transformed the way we shared information and connected, the block-chain will redefine we exchange value and whom we trust. This is all the more important when much of the education will happen online, also lifelong and life-wide (learning and personal development in real contexts and authentic settings), naturally learners yearning for learning in a trustful environment. With this technology not only the educational transactions will become trustworthy, but also setting up digital lockers holding students' credentials will become faster, with student reports automatically getting uploaded with validation processes in place.

Governance reflects in the quality of administration and management. It translates into putting in place- standards, information on performance, incentives for good performance, and also accountability. Technologies that can lead to quality governance in the education sector include cloud computing, mobile apps, digital identity, RFID, real-time translation, data analytics and block-chain. Advancements in these technologies can ensure us- safe, secure and authentic database vaults, digitization and storage of personal and public records, advanced forensics, advanced biometrics for digital identity and human independent decision support systems- promising to make governance in education more transparent, speedy and effective.

Technology for revamping education

For education, as we have just seen, technology has the potential to touch almost every aspect of it- slaying the traditional bottlenecks of inclusivity, infrastructure, economics and geography. The education systems hitherto, were designed to provide the information already available, to equip the students to grapple with similar situations in future. However, with democratization and easy access to education, and the rapid changes across sectors, induced by technologies, some galloping at the exponential rate, the system has to empower learners to shape the unpredictable future. Thus, education of the future will all be about how to learn and not what to learn and, scales tilted more in favour of innovation than invention. This paradigm shift would mean a radical change in the role of teachers who are considered the cornerstone, dwindling of the rigidity in academic institutions, and revisiting the structures and policies in governance. 

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The author is a Scientist with Technology Information, Forecasting & Assessment Council (TIFAC), currently on deputation to All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE)

(The views are personal)
nrjsaxena@gmail.com