Changing Education …

A few days ago, came across this article about the CS221 program offered by Stanford online. You can find more programs here. I found these quite fascinating. Somewhere, these present a changing face of education … or do they? I suppose this change started with MIT putting their courseware online. Then there was academicearth, which i thought was a sort of game-changer given that here, we didnt just have the courseware, but the entire lecture series video-recorded, and posted online. This meant anyone with an internet connection could be there, could learn from the some of the top universities, from anywhere in the world. Then there was Khan Academy … a game-changer in terms of the sheer scale Salman Khan has been created over the last 6 years (please dont look at these chronologically, am just trying to build the sort of continuum of changes which i feel have contributed to a possible new direction for education), and then there was classroom videos posted on youtube. Amazing, wouldnt you say?

These have a way of changing the way education is delivered going forward. If you look at the scenario today, teachers at a university deliver the same lectures year after year to a different audience. Instead of having to do this, teachers could video-record their lectures, and post them online, to be available to students. On their part, teachers need to be able to be available to guide research, mentor Ph. D. folks, and (probably the new aspect here), manage the learning process. When talking about managing the learning process, am talking about creating, managing, kindling conversations among students, guiding and mentoring students to enable them to learn more beyond the classroom lectures, and facilitate learning outside the classroom, in an ongoing way.

The next part, of course, is how this changing paradigm of education can be leveraged in the business scenario to redefine the training landscape. Any thoughts?

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