Teach Middle East Magazine Jan - Mar 2020 Issue 2 Volume 7 | Page 23
Sharing Good Practice
WHAT WILL THE SCHOOL OF 2030
LOOK LIKE?
BY: RAMESH JAGANNATHAN
A
ccording to Dell, 85% of
jobs which will exist in
2030 are yet to be invented.
It's a sobering statistic for
modern educators, who have the task
of training young people for jobs which
currently have not been thought of. Yet
in spite of the challenges which rapid
digitization of our modern economy
brings, the fourth industrial revolution
also brings with it, its own solutions:
new forms of teaching, of assessment
and even of the teacher. Which begs
the question: how will our children
learn in 2030?
Indications of the directions in which
we are headed are already available.
When a Stanford University professor
founded Udacity, opening up its
'Introduction to Artificial Intelligence'
course to the world online, a total of
160,000 people registered for the class
— up from the usual 200 students.
Participants translated the class for
free into 44 languages, providing
customized individual education.
This is not an anomaly. Khan Academy,
with its slogan of "free, world-class
education for anyone, anywhere," has
delivered almost a billion lessons,
solved more than six billion problems,
and is available in 190 countries. 48
million registered users access Khan
Academy in dozens of languages.
According to a PwC report, Artificial
Intelligence could contribute to as
much as a 14 per cent boost in global
GDP by 2030, equivalent to $15.7 trillion.
While there is an ongoing debate
about the impact of AI on society, it is
conceivable that AI-driven education
programs
would
fundamentally
democratize education as a birth-right
to people from all walks of life. AI could
enable complementary remote and
mixed-reality work environments for
humans and machines, in real-time.
AI stands to change not only
global access to education but
also
fundamental
educational
methodologies. For the last two
centuries, the world experienced a
significant expansion in learning –
global literacy rates skyrocketed from
12 to 88 per cent. However, the way
we teach has not changed. While
education access is beginning to be
modernized, content delivery must
also adapt. Here, AI can provide a
range of solutions.
Lucas Rizzotto succinctly summarized
areas that AI can positively impact
in terms of personalized and
experiential learning. Personalized
learning customizes education to
each individual. Rizzotto cites a study
by neurologist Dr Judy Will who
found that personal meaning is the
most critical factor for creating long-
term memories that are available
for later retrieval, which has been
substantiated by the Bill and Melinda
Gates Foundation studies.
While personalized learning processes
exist today, they require significantly
more teachers and much more time.
AI can cater to individual requirements
and achieve results in this field at scale
and low cost. For example, almost all
coding lessons require an elementary
knowledge of the English language, but
80 per cent of the world population —
some 6 billion people — has little or no
proficiency in English. To address this
problem, Codecademy, a successful
NYC-based start-up, has created a
text-based instruction platform in
several languages, allowing students
to choose the language of instruction
at any stage in the learning process.
In principle, these kinds of AI-enabled
coding platforms could continuously
evaluate and anticipate the level of the
challenge per user and continuously
switch
their
learning
language,
customizing to each student's learning
ability.
Finally, experiential learning projects
are
already
wielding
cutting-
edge technologies for educational
purposes. Rizzotto cites the example
of a start-up called 'The Body VR' that
uses virtual reality to take biology
and medical students on a journey
through the human body, allowing
them to interact with organs, blood
vessels and cells for a truly immersive
educational experience. He further
discusses exciting applications that
have been conceptualized, including
tracking students' eye pupils to access
the emotional profile of students in
real-time. This could even go as far as
predicting their actions, questioning
the very concept of tests and exams.
Indeed, if you can read a student's
mind, there is no need for a final exam.
The fourth industrial revolution poses
distinct challenges for our current
students of needing to apply skill
sets to technologies and jobs which,
as of yet, have not been thought of.
However, it is only through embracing
the new digital ecosystem that we can
come to solve these issues, providing
our students with new forms of
educational experience, new ways of
assessment, and indeed, a new type of
schooling.
Ramesh Jagannathan is currently the Vice Provost for Innovation and
Entrepreneurship and Managing Director of startAD, the innovation and
entrepreneurship platform at NYU Abu Dhabi.
Class Time
Term 2 Jan - Mar 2020
23