The future of learning
I was talking to a friend about the WWDC experience, trying to convey the excitement that such an event brings to Mac programmers. At some point he asked me, so what did you learn? I started talking about how nice it was to be able to ask questions to Apple engineers who were able to explain some of the concepts that I needed to understand in order to complete my Professional Crossword Designer project.
That is nice, he said, but what about the courses? That is when it stroke me. I didn’t really care about the formal training. I attended WWDC mainly to understand the direction Apple was setting for Leopard and to meet other Mac developers (as there aren’t many others where I live). My friend wanted to know what I had learned in a traditional sense, but the world has changed. I do not know in detail the new APIs, just the general picture. If I do need to get into the details I know the information will be available to me on the Internet. I do not have the luxury of infinite spare time to learn something that I am not sure I will ever need. The problem is that in general we do not know what we will need to know a year from now, let alone in five or ten years. That is why the traditional model is crumbling.
Universities are the best example of this traditional model. Students spend four years or more learning material that should prepare them in theory for a life long career. That was useful until a couple of decades ago, but in most cases, it is becoming less and less useful in this changing world.
This doesn’t mean that we should abandon our goal to give students a general basic education that will help them understand the world we live in. Everyone should have a solid understanding of mathematics, physics, biology, economics, politics, history, geography, literature and philosophy. We cannot expect children to learn voluntarily on their own. However, at college levels it is a quite different and I am quite sure that higher education will suffer dramatic changes over the next decades. E-learning is progressing rapidly and I would expect that more and more careers will rely heavily on this kind of tools to reduce the cost of education. In such a context, tutors are likely to play an increasingly important role as students will need help sorting out among the increasing levels of educational material available, while teachers should see their importance diminishing.
For me, this new model is exciting and opens lots of new possibilities. After all, I always try to stay current, listening to podcasts on all kinks of different topics while in my car. However, I see some inhibitors to the widespread adoption of this new model. The main one is lack of interest or curiosity. Too many students only learn because they are told to do so and for the fear of exams. Without supervision they would probably do something else that provides instant gratification (partying comes to mind).
I think that part of the problem is our society which judges people on many scales but rarely true accomplishments. However, while society is important, we cannot expect others to define what is important or not for ourselves. We are the ones who must strive to become better in each aspect of our live day after day.