I believe e-courses will eventually change people's attitude toward learning. Education will play an increasingly dominant role in people's lives. For people of all ages and all geographies.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Concepts like edX and online learning will transform education. This will completely change the world. I believe that people will move to online learning, both on campuses and worldwide. We have a real opportunity to be able to bring people around the world into our fold.
Not everything that happens in an in-person classroom is currently replicated with an online course, and perhaps the experience will never be the quite the same. But there are new opportunities that online learning opens up that would have never been possible without this technology.
The implications of so many people connected to the Internet all the time from the standpoint of education is incredible.
Education used to be a slice of life, something you did as a child through college, and then spent the rest of your life working, and then death. Everything is about to change. I believe education will become something that fits seamlessly into life, and we will take big clunky things like degrees and college and fit them into a weekend.
In the field of higher ed, many have asked whether (or when) digital education will replace on-campus education. I wonder the opposite. Cinema never replaced theatre. TV didn't replace radio. I wonder how different digital education will be from classrooms, and where it will lead us.
Students do everything on laptops these days, so I definitely think electronic books are a trend that's going to expand.
While classrooms will be in use for many years to come, their value will diminish quickly as the online options become more pervasive. Many of the physical classrooms will be converted to eLearning laboratories, some to research centers. The real classroom of the future will take place inside the mind of the student, wherever they happen to be.
Online education, then, can serve two goals. For students lucky enough to have access to great teachers, blended learning can mean even better outcomes at the same or lower cost. And for the millions here and abroad who lack access to good, in-person education, online learning can open doors that would otherwise remain closed.
I really believe that we have to work hard to make online education better and better, and eventually it's going to be really great. But like most of these things, it takes time to improve, to understand and to make things really good.
I feel that education needs an overhaul - courses are obsolete and grades are on the way out.