One way the future of education will be affected by the use of social media is the changes in the ways learning takes place. Already, Distance Education and Hybrid courses are becoming increasingly popular, as students who are willing to work at their own pace are able to work easily from home.
Distance Education, or Distance Learning, is simply the use of the Internet, or other methods, to receive an education for those who cannot physically travel to a classroom. Hybrid courses are even more practical- essentially being courses that combine online and classroom learning. As a student at Sheridan College, I've had one Hybrid course per semester so far, and at least half of my courses have had a lot of online integration, such as online tests, or online assignments.
The Government of Canada also offers a virtual alternative to traditional post-secondary education by promoting the electronic resource- Canadian Virtual University. Currently, the CVU offers more than 300 programs and 2,400 courses, but combined, other Canadian colleges and universities offer thousands more.
It is easy to identify the trend of online education, and it can assumed that by the year 2020, a much as half of learning will be done in "online classrooms". Despite the future success of this type of learning, it would appear that online learning will never totally surpass traditional methods of learning. This can be shown by data that suggests that as a teacher gains more years of experience teaching online courses, their likelihood of keeping their course content a fully online experience drops. The same study shows that teachers with 0-2 years of experience teaching online courses are more likely to rely solely on online content, where teachers with 6+ years of experience teaching online courses are more likely to integrate their courses with face-to-face time.
Further, according to a survey, the three most significant factors that affect the success of online programs are monetary support (24.7%), teaching competency of the instructors (22.9%) and technical competency of the instructors (15.3%). These details clearly show that despite the potential for online learning, instructors will still have to be equally as regarded upon as traditional professors.
Lastly, the focus of future online education and online classrooms will be on a dynamic, engaging and active learning experience, and this will ultimately be the reason why the concept will either succeed or fail in the future. Ten years ago, the projected success of online learning was significantly higher than it would realistically become, and as such, it can be expected that the next ten years will provide the same challenges for a personalized education. For an interesting perspective on the future of "online classrooms", read this article written in 1998 about the next ten years of online education, and notice the similarities between the 1998 and 2012 perspective.
Really interesting blog post, Curtis. This made me think:
ReplyDelete"The same study shows that teachers with 0-2 years of experience teaching online courses are more likely to rely solely on online content, where teachers with 6+ years of experience teaching online courses are more likely to integrate their courses with face-to-face time."
It made me realize again that because of the students now going into school to become teachers/professors, many of them will not only be fluent in the internet and social media, but may use it to their teaching advantage. Here is an interesting link on teachers teaching with twitter!