Understanding the Online Learning Community

How the internet helps unlock the world’s potential

Education is supposed to be the great equaliser in the world. A hub where clever minds meet to sharpen one another, a place of inclusive growth, a launch pad towards opportunities that could change our lives forever. This is all true, for some.

For most of the world, formal education simply reflects the inequalities of our generation. Taking roots to the day where formal schooling was to be reserved for only the aristocrats who could afford private mentors, formal education was a very exclusive practise. It wasn’t until the industrial revolution, when we saw the shift from an agriculture labor force to jobs that needed more expertise, till we saw the mindset of “Education for all”.

If you look around you today, Colleges and Universities both public and private are prevalent. Though we still face numerous problems with regards to affordability, quantity wise, the reach of schools has never been better. But what about its quality? The United Nations has an SDG named, “Quality Education For All”. But what exactly does quality education look like? To get a better understanding of this, we must first look at the evolution of formal education so far.

Raise your hands if you have any questions

Lecture Hall, 15th Century.

As mentioned, schools became a lot more common, class sizes grew, and the ever so famous lecture hall was born. The word “Lecture” actually means “to read”, just as the professors would read out his documents for his students to scribble and make their own copies. Transfer of information, easy.

But then, something amazing happened. The printing press was discovered! Books were being printed left and right, they had to make these big places to store all of this information called libraries. Information was accessible, and the lecture could be deemed obsolete. We could experiment with new forms of teaching. But the education industry is one of slow pace, ironically pessimistic towards change. Perhaps a technological shift so undeniably huge would help kill the lecture? Ergo, the internet.

Today I can ask Google anything and that information finds me in a jiffy! Today, I also still sit in lectures. My point is that the speed of innovation is there, the tools to disrupt the way we learn is there and is already taking place, but schools are slow to adapt. What are the hurdles that stand in the way of schools leveraging the internet for learning? What are the opportunities that await this relevant shift? What does this mean for the world and its life long learners?

The Purpose of Education?

The reason why education exists is to help individuals tap into their potential, in order to better serve the society at large. With this in mind, our society thrives on diversity. If there were no farmers, we would go hungry, if there were no firefighters, we would not be safe, if there were no jazz dancers, well life would just be dull. The problem we face in our education system, both in formal schools and even in most of the online class providers, is that there isn’t an equal weight given to all subjects. Why? Because some jobs just pay more, it is as simple as that.

Why do you think parents get nervous when their child tells them they want to become a comedian? Off the bat, you are not given a lot of room for flexibility and experimentation for your craft and studies, which is a huge problem because everyone is unique. The internet helps democratise learning and empowers students to build their own curriculum. However, in a world where credentials reign supreme, the path less taken (seemingly) isn’t the smarter route right now.

In an ideal school…

Schools are living things, it is not simply a building, a school is a community of learners. Think of it like a bed of soil and the students are like seeds planted underneath the ground, just like any seeds, they need the right conditions to grow and flourish. What are these conditions? Well we’ve mentioned that students are all unique, and therefore a one-size fits all system should be seen as obsolete. Instead, we must thrive for an adaptive system that fits all. One that adjusts to the 4 P’s.

Passion

What is it that you love to do? Not necessarily what you are good at, you can be great at math and hate it. I’m talking about what is that you could do 7 days a week that would bring a smile in your face?

Place

Where do you learn best? The internet allows us to learn mobile, and helps save costs. No need to build an entire campus when it can fit in your pocket. At the same time, if you do learn best in a building or maybe the forest, get out of the house!

Pace

Why 4 years? That’s a question Stanford has been raising in recent years. People learn at different speeds and we shouldn’t thrive for passing grades but for mastery instead. As Sal Khan would say, “It’s like we are taught to ride a bike, and we kind of get it. Then times up! Next lesson, here is a unicycle.”

Preferences

Are you a hands on learner? Would you prefer virtual reality? Can the arts and math really be learned in the same way? How do you learn best?

The good news is that people are already using the internet to enjoy the benefits that the 4P’s has to offer. You can take an online course from the most prestige Universities in the world from Coursera, or take up knitting from Skillshare. You can learn how to act from Samuel Jackson himself in Masterclass, or learn photography in Udemy. All of which are extremely affordable, a mere fraction of what a college degree would cost.

And there are free options out there too, websites like Udacity offer free courses related to technology and business. Khan Academy and it’s voice over blackboard style will help get you through calculus. Or you could always turn to the University of Google and Youtube and learn almost anything there. So why still go to school? Two C’s, credentials and community.

Personalised learning, or isolated learning?

The visibility of the learning community is much more evident in a physical school compared to an online class. There may be chat rooms and video to help create a more personal touch to the online learning world, but you can’t replace the real thing. On the other side of the coin, doing everything together doesn’t make sense either, because as we mentioned, people need flexibility in order to achieve the 4P’s.

Perhaps, this is why some schools have adopted the concept of blended learning. Which is having both online and offline interactions integrated into their curriculum. Something similar, called the Flipped classroom helps students learn at their own pace as they view their lessons at home, and come to school to do collaborative work to apply these lessons.

The biggest driver, however, that makes formal schooling the popular choice is credentials. How do I know that you know what you know? It’s a trust system that has been around for hundreds of years, like how badges in the military determine authority and rank in the army, the diploma is the key towards higher paying sought after jobs in society.

The problem of a credential driven school system? Students are paying for the degree, not the education. Quite frankly, it does help to have a degree and you probably should go to college. But we all know that you can pass a class one day and the next day forget everything you “learned”. This is a result of our test driven culture, spawned out of global competitiveness to have the best standardised testing scores.

Little by little, credentials are being decentralised. From being provided from just the schools, to anywhere you can learn. And little by little we are starting to learn with anyone, anywhere, and not just in schools. If we can find the perfect balance between credentials and community, then accessibility and incentives to learn in a model that is adaptive to our passions, place, pace, and preferences becomes more and more a reality.

What now?

For now, we must continue to play the tug-of-war game between certified credential learning and truly democratised quality education. And so, if you are a student in a school, make use of that community. Don’t limit yourself to your course, build your own curriculum, talk to interesting people, take a few online classes. If you’re a teacher, create the conditions where students can flourish. Play around with deadlines, don’t be afraid of the phone, organise a field trip. Let’s get creative with how we learn today, perhaps it’ll be the norm tomorrow.