Is technology finally making a difference to learning?
Technology has the potential to provide high quality education to millions of learners. Vivek Agarwal from elearning company Liqvid explores what it takes to fulfill this potential.
There is a new excitement about technology applications in learning. MOOCs, Analytics and mobile have renewed expectations that this time it is for real – that finally we will be able to realize the potential of technology to bring the benefits of high quality education to the masses. But how real is this expectation? And what needs to be done to achieve this?
The skepticism is for good reasons. Over the past three to four decades, there have been waves of technology advancements, each bringing with it the promise to deliver. First there was the multimedia software on CD-ROMs, then there was the interactive digital content on the internet and now there is all this. In infrastructure-challenged countries like India, a big market had developed in the past decade for bundling hardware with content.
The new technology developments represent the coming together of several elements, especially in the developed markets – all pervasive smart phones and tablets, abundant bandwidth and investment capital. This has been supplemented by big name universities including Harvard and Stanford and professors who have started offering programs on these platforms, thereby bringing high quality education available to all. Hundreds of thousands of students have been logging in, although the dropout rates are very high. But there are tens of thousands completing these programs – a number that was never possible before.
The economics of this are still unclear. Some people are willing to pay for a degree. One large driver of value is data about learners – how they study, when they study, what they do, etc. Once collected in significantly large quantity, this data can be correlated with the learning outcomes and help improve the design and approach of learning programs. The value of the potential rewards from this cannot be overstated.
Even as this flourishes in the developed markets, the emerging markets have to content with their lack of infrastructure in terms of low penetration of smart phones, tablets and PCs, as well as the quality and availability of bandwidth. The solutions here are being designed around the concept of “sometimes connected”, meaning that the learner has access to bandwidth, but it is of low quality and is not continuous. This implies that the streaming solutions are not yet scaling. Also, low penetration of hardware means that learners have to depend on community access points in institutions.
In sum, it does seem that we finally have a confluence of elements that will help bring the benefits of technology in education to hundreds of millions of learners, who have been excluded from the mainstream so far. However, this will mean the solutions will have to be designed very carefully, keeping the needs of the different groups in mind.
Global Mindset has presented Vivek’s ideas along with digital thinking, leadership thinking, global thinking, lateral thinking and an education technology Start Up pitch at the conference ‘Innovations in Learning’ on 13 August in Sydney.
Vivek Agarwal is the founder and CEO of Liqvid. The idea is to provide personalised learning that takes the shape of the learner. Liqvid is focused on providing English language learning solutions to individuals and organisations. Liqvid has more than 250,000 learners across schools, colleges, vocational institutes and corporate for this program. Before starting Liqvid, Vivek had co-founded egurucool, which emerged as the pioneer in the field of elearning in India, combining a unique learning methodology and a huge infrastructure of technology and content creation processes. eGurucool was subsequently sold to NIIT. Vivek has an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management Calcutta. He has been regularly speaking in conferences and seminars in India and abroad, including the UK and USA.
Maira_UWB
October 4, 2014 at 9:48 am
We are learning!
I think human race has evolved over the period of time! Its a journey from being completely clueless to getting an idea and developing conscience and conscious. Technology is making a potent difference. We are no more dependent on fire for safety..we have gone ahead with labels. It is not that we never made mistakes, it is just that we are learning and learning is a never ending fun of endless journey.