Introduction
Our world has always been in a race between technology and education. Usually these two go hand in hand, but there are some points in history where technology is so far ahead that education can barely keep up.
Let me give you a quick, historical example. In the 15th century, technology rushed forward as a great piece of technology was invented, with the printing press allowing books to be printed much more cheaply than ever before. Well, unfortunately, only a small fraction of the entire population knew how to read, eventually leading to massive social conflict and inequality at some point.
The entire education system was revolutionized to keep up as the first universities and schools were born. Well, this has happened a few times in history. Every time technology has advanced, it first leads to social pain and inequality until at some point, the entire education system is overturned to keep up.
Now let’s go back to 2019. Do we have a similar race between technology and education today? I think yes we do. We invented a new and powerful technology called digitization.
Digitization
Polygonal brain shape of an artificial intelligence with various icon of smart city Internet of Things Technology over Asian young Student in casual suit reading the book in library of university
Everyday we can now see how smartphones, the internet, artificial intelligence are changing our jobs as well as our private lives. A recent McKinsey study predicts that in the next ten years, up to a third of all work activities could be completely replaced by automation.
Automation
Today, algorithms built by a few techies in Silicon Valley decide how we communicate with each other. They decide how we buy things. They can even be used to manipulate entire elections, as we have seen in the US.
But the vast majority of us here today have no idea how this technology actually works, do we? What I’m wondering is how are we supposed to be able to make wise political decisions as citizens if we don’t understand what’s possible and what’s not?
So, as in the historical examples just seen, there is now a growing gap between those who designed the change and those who were left behind because they lacked the skills or means to adapt.
Once again, technology runs ahead and education lags behind. I personally worked as a data scientist. I studied information systems and artificial intelligence at the universities here in Münster and at Harvard.
I then went on to lead a team of 15 engineers at an analytics startup. Every day I stood up and did my best to help technology move forward, until I realized that in fact, the far greater challenge and the far greater opportunity for our society lies in the other part of this struggle.
Digital Education
Happy schoolgirl and her classmates e-learning over laptops during a class in the classroom.
Helping digital education help people catch up. So this year, I quit my job to pursue digital education full time. I think let’s take a look at the second part of the match here.
Education
Well, there we see that our educational institutions are now facing conditions that have changed dramatically in recent years.
Old world
We are moving from an old world with a situation where great learning content is rare, to a new world where much knowledge is a commodity and is often free to use either as YouTube material, a blog post or some other type of material.
We’re also moving from an old world with very fixed career paths to a new world where, well, a lot of the knowledge we learn in higher education isn’t relevant ten years later.
My own generation will probably retire in 2060, but I can’t even predict what skills will be relevant to myself well, five years from now. So, how have our educational institutions changed in the face of these dramatic changes? Not much, right? We still live in a world where we put hundreds of people in the same huge lecture halls designed for one-size-fits-all teaching philosophy, right?
And even more, we see this, this old world and lifelong learning. We still have a lot of companies where employees just spend maybe, maybe two or maybe three days a year with training. Correctly? That would be like going to the doctor and asking him, what do I need to do to stay fit and healthy for the rest of my life?
Technology for Learning
And he says, Well, David, I advise you to run a marathon very early in life and you’ll be well and fit and healthy for the rest of your life. Doesn’t sound like good advice, does it? So I’m afraid we’re going to lose this fight. Between technology and education, as the way of teaching has not evolved with the dramatic change required these days.
And I don’t think we can tolerate that. And I think we need a new generation to take this matter into their own hands. Well, two years ago, my friend Marius and I decided to start on the green field to build education into experience. From the beginning, we developed this idea of what we call a learning accelerator.
Learning Accelerator
Artificial Intelligence CPU processors concept, Ai computing with circuit board, machine learning
A learning accelerator is based on a very simple but radical idea, using cutting-edge technology to put all available efforts into the individual student and the learning environment. To implement this idea, we founded a non-profit organization right here in Münster, actually just a few minutes away from the stage.
We called it Tech Labs. Tech labs teach coding skills in the areas of web development, data science, artificial intelligence It’s a 16-week program completely free, open to everyone and designed so you can complete it alongside your studies or regular work .
For example, Tech Labs is based on three fundamental principles that define our idea of a learning accelerator and our idea of digital education in the 21st century. The first is the effective combination of online and offline learning.
Online and offline learning
Man drawing a set graph about education formula on a virtual screen
Every student at Tech Labs has access to our own online learning platform with videos, assignments, articles. Most of this content is not produced by us, but sourced and curated from the web’s vast and often free resources. So, if you are a morning person, you can do your e-learning courses in the morning.
If you’re an owl, you do it at night. If you struggle with a certain concept, you can always go back and revisit the lecture because the computer doesn’t get tired of explaining it to you 3 or 4 times in a row. On the other hand, we use offline meetings to interact with our students, invite speakers, hackathons and social events.
Personalization.
Let me ask you here in the audience, who among you use Amazon and order from Amazon? This is impressive. Correctly. And I think a big part, a big part of that success is based on Amazon learning our behavior over time, right? That it learns which product we might like or buy next.
But what I wonder is, why does our society spend billions on improving and researching these personalization algorithms in services like Amazon or Spotify, but almost nothing on providing these personalized digital learning opportunities in education? Is it any wonder that we have completely failed to use these personalization technologies for use in education? We still live in a world where some of us think it’s actually called personalization.
If the instructor knows the student’s name, I mean, that’s a good start. But when it comes to education, people are radically different, aren’t they? Everyone needs a specific pace, a specific path and a specific learning goal and destination Thus, in tech Labs, each student gets a unique personalized learning path based on prior knowledge.
And even with the basic version on our platform that we’re currently using, the results are absolutely amazing and I can imagine the wonderful things that would happen if universities and schools now used it on a larger scale.
Community learning
Young female mentor leader coach teaching employees group analyzing online project explaining business strategy speaking training diverse corporate team with laptop using computer at office meeting
Technical skills are not easy. And if you struggle with a certain concept, and it always happens at some point when learning to code, it’s often not the instructor, but your classmates and peers who help you stay motivated and keep going.
I think today we fundamentally underestimate the value of these learning communities in our educational institutions today. So by killing that traditional one-size-fits-all lecture and letting people have a flexible e-learning lecture at home, we’re really freeing up valuable offline time for deep interaction with our students. So we use technology to make the classroom more social.
I think that’s one of the very paradoxical things these days, right? That using technology actually transforms a very anti-social experience People listening in a lecture hall, just being quiet, listening in a social environment that embraces curiosity, diversity and the value of learning new things. So what does all this look like in practice?
In practice
In your first week, you usually start by simply meeting your classmates and your learning community. Then, a few days later, you can actually get started with your own piece of eLearning that has been generalized and personalized and created just for you.
conclusion
Ultimately, this new type of education is not just about teaching a few more technical skills. It is about teaching people to take charge of their lives and participate in addressing one of the greatest challenges facing the wise management of power today.