Experiential education with new technological application 

More focus on critical thinking, adaptive thinking, computational thinking, sense making, design mindset, social intelligence, systems thinking.

It is slowly changing but with constant almost liear rate while technology is growing exponentially. It would be good if there would be big exponential growth in education.

This is a very pertinent question. Closely related to it is the question how education should be changed.

Ben Levin correctly pointed out that informal education (unstructured, e.g. on-the-job training) is different from non-formal (structure, course-type) and formal (structured, i.e. school, university) education.

Research and practice will have to respond and show how institutions of these three types of education need to react to the challenges of industry 4.0. A competency model that includes personal, social and meta competencies, in addition to "technical" knowledge and skills, may be a good start.

Like Jayakumar Manickam, I see an urgent need for improved personal competencies  (e.g., ability in critical thinking, self-directed learning), social competencies (e.g., ability to participate in and lead teams) and meta-competencies (e.g., ability to evaluate own competencies and those of others). Providers of formal education must respond to these needs.

I believe that organizations (as employers) should also view themselves as education providers. In an industry 4.0 context, organizations will have to transfer competencies that are very specific to work places. In order to evaluate the success of such transfer - and its wider recognition - providers of formal / non-formal education should monitor the informal learning processes.

I am advocating therefore for a network of knowledge / competence transfer - providers, with organizations (employers), workers (of all levels) and educational institutions as main actors.

Depending on the type of economy, either the state or representatives of a mix of interest groups must provide an enabling enironment.

In my own native Austria, the Ministry of Innovation and Technology is embarking on a programme to do (hopefully) exactly that. One hopes that societal aspects - in addition to technical ones - will be included.

Mr. Leopold 's answer is comprehensive. When we think of Education we always think of formal schools and Colleges. In the 4.0 context, it is tagging and labeling of information is more important than memorizing; Hand held devices can store more info than previous periods; processing speed is also high now; analytical tools are are readily available;  co-creation of knowledge  is  practiced now; However authenticity, relevance, update of information is more important;  Access to technology decides access to knowledge

This is an interesting starting point asking ‘what is happening?’. This question leads us to a chain of enquiry with the links being: ‘why is it happening (or not happening)?’. What are the drivers and brakes of change? What will a technologically shaped system of education look like? Whose needs and interests would it serve? How might we go about answering such questions systematically when ‘science’ is constructed around the empirical investigation of what ‘is’ rather than what ‘might be’?

I’ll try to share some thoughts on each in turn in a few sentences in relation to schools rather than HE.

Relatively little technology related change is happening in comparison to the fields of banking, medicine, entertainment etc. A doctor from 1917 would be profoundly disoriented if she were transported to an operating theatre of 2017. A teacher from 1917 transported to a maths lesson of 2017 would recognise easily context, content, role and process. The most powerful technologies present would be hidden in pupils pockets and school bags…...having been banned by the school as being “disruptive”. These technologies ARE disruptive…..and schools do not like disruption.

Whilst in most businesses digital technologies are a magnifying mediator between inputs and profit in a state funded school digital technologies are a cost as even if “output” were increased due to technology use this is not realised as a financial return on investment. The drivers for the integration of technologies into schools are largely commercial, fashion, or government policy driven.

The ‘shape of things to come’ would, I suggest, be characterised by increasing diversity with technology being used to create very different types of learning environment for pupils from different socio-economic backgrounds. The dynamic cyber-schools where technologies link learners to explore, create and share as a “learning community” will be the learning environment within which the children of the rich form, consolidate and realise their social and cultural network capital. The children of the poor in a world where the state seeks to minimise its role in educational provision to a “safety net” will occupy institutions where an appropriately ‘vocational’ curriculum is spooned out and tested automatically and ‘cost effectively’ with the role of the ‘teacher’ marginalised to ‘supervisor’.

If a major affordance of digital technologies on a macro-scale is to remediate power and so to re-engineer social institutions the question of power and influence becomes vitally important in a democracy and potentially challenges the notion of the nation state. In the capitalist and globalist mindset education is a process by which human capital is formed and trained into corporate and social obedience. Knowledge is reduced to “content” and teaching and learning is constructed as “content shifting”. As the global corporate entities gain control of the “content” and “the pumps and pipes” which move it around (and the mechanisms by which it is assessed) the democratic control of education is lost and it serves neither citizen nor state but a global network of corporate interests.

So how might we research and examine such issues which are not tractable to the measuring instrument or the interview? Futures studies or (as I prefer) futurology is a much neglected enterprise which has a value which far exceeds the degree to which the academic community is prepared to support it.

In considering the future there is perhaps one adage which is more important than the others.

As they say……..”be careful what you wish for”.

Dear Adrian Mee,

I thank you for having put the right perspectives to the debate. Traditionally  Educational Institutions are self correcting institutions like Judiciary and Media; It is also both inward and outward looking institution; Education takes take a long gestation period; Is Education for public good ?

Thank you. I do not have an answer, but maybe we'll find it together? Thank you for your comments. Sorry for the pause. Sincerely. Mykhaylo Zhuk. Sumy, Ukraine