I would call non-formal education itself a key point. Also education is getting more personal, individual, intelligent. We now return from the classroom system brought about by the industrialisation back to the Plato's Academy. Although the teacher is a platform, that interacts with the learner as an active participant of the educational process. There's a concept of three-agent or three-subject educational platforms: Conference Paper THREE AGENT PLATFORM APPROACH FOR DIGITAL EDUCATION ENVIRONMENT

Full data analysis, AI, Learning Analytics and Psychometry - are all the key points behind the concept, and the future of education.

Higher education sector faces numerous challenges from changing student profiles (more digital natives occupied classroom either virtual or residential), business models (funding regimes including), teaching mode of delivery (either face-to-face or blended or online), new ways of assessment including alternative assessment practices (are students as main stakeholders part of this process?) and context (residential or distance learning) and funding constrains (include more cMOOCs or OERs in course work to reduce costs). Teacher education have been started rethinking and re-imaging the type of curricula and include more teaching-integrated technology-driven either residual or online platforms. Their objective has been to change the traditional pedagogies employed by lecturers, either in contact (residential) or in online classrooms, to accommodate and include digital natives in the learning process.

I would call non-formal education itself a key point. Also education is getting more personal, individual, intelligent. We now return from the classroom system brought about by the industrialisation back to the Plato's Academy. Although the teacher is a platform, that interacts with the learner as an active participant of the educational process. There's a concept of three-agent or three-subject educational platforms: Conference Paper THREE AGENT PLATFORM APPROACH FOR DIGITAL EDUCATION ENVIRONMENT

Full data analysis, AI, Learning Analytics and Psychometry - are all the key points behind the concept, and the future of education.

i think the answer lies in why you believe non-formal education is gaining importance. i would consider relevance - being able to guarantee outcomes/ gains, and speed. non-formal has at least these two advantages over formal i would think

I believe the challenges are in the ever changing commitments of the new age students. One of my students said" If you want to learn, you can learn anywhere". even though it is a true statement , but nonetheless incomplete for it does not give a measurement to the type of student and the opportunities available for that student and in what region in the world or environment they exist in. The traditional pedagogies are great in the formal educational settings, but I would have to agree that the non-formal education is becoming of importance and it has been demonstrated with many of the distant learning institutes.

Thank you very much for your contributions. As Michael points out, the digital dimension of learning is one of the biggest challenges we have to face in education. Virtual tools are a new way of communicating. The question is, are they better, more useful, more profitable than the traditional pedagogies? I think Airat, Brian and Hisham provide a very interesting point about non-formal education. It is true that the hegemony of learning in the classroom is disappearing and learning is a much more open, democratic and autonomous process. Given this scenario, what is, or should be, the teacher's role? It is clear that formal education is the one that "credits" knowledge, however, as you point out, learning is increasingly outside the classroom.

Ruben, I agreed with you but as indicated earlier, there are challenges facing the education sector. To overcome these challenges we need to adopt or to become redundant. Let's give you an lived experienced example- seven years ago, I was appointed at an open distance learning (ODL) university. Before my appointment, I was in my comfit zone teaching daily face-to-face contact sessions. Suddenly, I found myself in this online ODL space. I realized I was only trained as a teacher to teach in residential (classroom) space. This new environment challenges me to reflect on how to overcome this "new teaching space". It compelled me to made a critical pedagogical paradigm shift because the system forces me to complied. For three months I battled to get to grips with this challenge and other issues. So my question is: How are you teaching in an online space? At that moment I was a digital immigrant in a online space grappled with e-tools and my university online learning management systems. So, I decided to take a leap of faith, by exploring with Web 2.0 & 3.0 technologies. It was a trail-and-error learning adventure for the six months. I believed my attitude and my passion pulled me trough all the challenges. I attended all training seminars offered by the university human research unit, to be empowered to use e-tools and social media platforms become effectively (to learn with my students, I become a learner with my learners in an online pace). I overcome most of the challenges to teach online. I read and implemented flipped classroom pedagogy, now-in-space pedagogy, breaking down the walls of my class techniques, jigsaw strategy, team-game-tournaments collaborative groupings, other student centered learning techniques and other related online instructional strategies to build my own praxis and those of my student teachers. Now, I really enjoying my online teaching, and helping my students to produce quality ePortfolios to become self-directed learners / lifelong learners.

Read Jeremy Filkin book- The Third Industrial Revolution: How Lateral Power Is Transforming Energy, the Economy, and the World.

Micheal

I think that increased use of learning analytics and adaptive learning will have considerable consequences. We think we have gone through an ICT revolution already, with a lot of new tools and changed ways of teaching ande learning. That may be just the continuation of the old. What we have used is dramatically improved tools for documentation and communication. Those developments have been going on since the invention of writing, and documentation and communication has become better, faster, cheaper.

But, what ICTs are really good at is information processing. In teaching/leanring this means tools that do analysis work that only the teacher could do before; now it can be done in a much larger scale, helping the teacher and changing his role - and the conditions for learning as well.

We talk about ICTs as learning analytics and adaptive learning. They will eventually break up the industrial time use we have in most schooling - a normal time to learn x with teaching y, and if you dont do that you fail (a system mistake more than an individual shortcoming). We can ensure that people are constantly learning if we let time vary. However, we must reconstruct the sopcial dimension of teaching and learning. Not impossible at all, but a real challenge

Thank you Micheal and Anders for your contributions. There is no doubt that we are at transition from learning. I am a teacher in face-to-face and virtual teaching and I realize the gulf between these different methodologies. In virtual learning I see many potentialities but I also realize some limitations. For example, in my case I realize that the "simultaneous interaction" with the student, those little seconds you have to wait for an answer become "eternal" in some cases. In my opinion it is more artificial compared to face-to-face learning. I'm not saying that I don't like e-learning but, in my case, I transmit more knowledge and less social skills. what do you think about it?

I think that one of the challenges for educational systems today is to know how to combine professional training with citizenship education. Perhaps they are tilting too much towards the side of job training and for employment. This goal is important, but not the only one.

An interesting discussion. Both face-to-face and online learning environments provide great opportunities for students and staff. For me, what is fundamental, and this relates to your original question, the challenge is to change the mindset of both staff and students. HE is not just about knowledge delivery (in my opinion), it's about creating effective learning journeys. All too often, students expect to get answers and staff expect to give answers. With this mindset, we limit our perspective and imagination. Anders is correct, the ICT revolution has happened (until the next one ;-) ), but we need to be able to exploit those opportunities both for face-to-face and online learning. It was interesting to read Micheal's experience. We are herded into the HE, 'delivery' paradigm. It's easy and it ticks the boxes (identified by the existing system...), but we need a paradigm shift. As Micheal highlights though, it takes time and we don't often have the opportunity/time/support.

And that leads to another challenge, In HE we are rewarded for our research skills, but not our creation of good learning environments. Why would we change our mindset and the 20 years of lectures you have, when it's not going to get you anywhere? In fact, if you do change, students feel 'challenged' and therefore satisfaction scores can go down.

We have so many opportunities now, we just have to open our minds. It reminds me of a quote from an important educationalist ( :-) )" it is like a finger pointing a way to the moon. Don't concentrate on the finger or you will miss all that heavenly glory " The finger, in our analogy, is the technology.

Scientifically speaking, life stops without challenges and so does any person; to me challenge is the key motivation that drives you to do something; it is an implicit power that energizes a person; it is the stearing that keeps you driving safely until you reach your destiny

First of all we must recognize that urbanity has given us a new multiculturalism in the classroom, hence rescue from education parts of history as is the Roman culture in civic pride, strengthen principles and values, and above all establish an accompaniment taking advantage of information technologies to update knowledge, although it is true that the information is already so much that you can not learn by heart, there are specific points for reading and mathematics that must be learned by heart, as they are fundamental for life and the job.

Digitisation. Digitisation. Digitisation. [Not necessarily in that order.]

I believe that digitisation is very necessary but it is important that there is a reflexive process in the face of the paradigm shift. In my opinion, I believe that it is not only a question of making the knowledge digitised, but also how to make it meaningful and relevant for the formation of the citizen of the future. Let's think of one thing, if a Greek philosopher were to wake up after 23 centuries, one of the professions he would recognise would be that of a professor. What would be the challenge of education, digitizing it or redefining what we digitize?

Here are some usefull text

http://www.r4d.org/education/?gclid=EAIaIQobChMI_qT4saXs2AIVR7UYCh1BkwJ4EAAYASAAEgKs4_D_BwE

https://www.edutopia.org/blog/challenges-education-students-eye-view-hunter-maats-katie-obrien

http://www.leadered.com/pdf/2014MSC_AddressingCurrentandFutureChallenges.pdf

Well, I think that the flux of change we are living under is crucial

Lifelong learning is now recognized by educators, governing bodies, accreditation organizations, certification boards, employers, and the general public as one of the most important competencies that people must possess. This research aim is to explain how meeting this challenge will require changes in the way teachers teach and learners learn, as teachers take on a more facilitative role and learners take more responsibility for setting goals, identifying resources for learning, reflecting on and evaluating their learning. For teachers that train new teachers, this will require greater participation in self-assessment, peer assessment, evaluation of performance in practice, documentation of practice-based learning and improvement activities and learning at the point of care. In conclusion, students that want to become teachers are now exposed to multiple opportunities for practicing lifelong learning such as teaching others, participating in multidisciplinary conferences and engaging in research.