Out of all the themes in this week's reading list, "Education" is the one that stuck a chord with me. As an international student here at Carnegie Mellon University, ever more sinking in student debt, I couldn't help but wonder if there was a more economical way to access similar type of quality education and learning that I receive here at CMU? Well luckily for us, the answer is yes, accessible and affordable learning is here - Massively Open Online Courses (MOOCs)! This article's primary focus is to understand how MOOC's have led the democratization of education?; and tackles a more fundamental question in the process: what does education mean for us as a society?
Education in its earliest and primitive form was enculturation[1]. It helped in the transmission of values and accumulated knowledge over generations in a society. This is why primitively education was limited only to those of a higher social stratum. But as society has become complex over time, education has become more institutionalized, with learning has become more abstracted from practice and has to be distilled. Though this structure made sense in the early days, when accessibility was a very big problem and the world wasn't as connected as it is now. With the incredible modernization of our lives over the last few hundred years, accelerated by technology, one would think these advancements have improved our lives unilaterally in all aspects. But this isn't the case, there are a few sections of our society which have virtually remained unchanged over the years and one of them is education. Education, especially higher education, would seem to be only available to a select few in the higher economic strata of our society. In a world where a majority of governance is a democratic process, it is unclear how an institutionalized mechanism of education still make sense.
It's counter intuitive to think that we have our education system and institutions to thank for all the advancements we have come to enjoy today, but the system of knowledge propagation hasn't changed a bit over a long period of time except a few facelifts here and there. With the advent of MOOC's in the early 2000's and MIT's open-courseware (MIT-OCW), one could say education and the learning process finally caught up with the times we live in. Progressively over the years, online learning platforms like Khan Academy, Coursera, Udacity, edX, Udemy and Chegg (to name a few) have sprouted up, leading the charge on making education accessible to virtually everyone with a computer and internet connection. The landscape of online education was quickly transformed into a thriving and nourishing environment where students from all around the globe, irrespective of age or economic status, can now collaboratively learn and exercise their mental muscle. The major role that MOOCs have played in progressing the way we learn is to effectively reduce the need for physical classroom and improved matching of tutors to learners. Most MOOC's are essentially centered around the self-paced learning model, which means that we fundamentally address the problem that each student is different in the way they learn and grasp concepts. These qualities of MOOC's have made them the essential tool used in shaping democratized education.
The article by HBR [2] provides a good insight into how modern ed-tech (education technology) has had a positive impact on people. The figures below confirm that MOOCs have actually helped people in certain aspects in their lives. It is important to know that the base line here is that without MOOCs many students from developed countries wouldn't have access to certain types of learning topics.
It is a virtuous cycle, better-educated citizens equal a better workforce to propel the civilization as a whole into the future. To say the least, open source and free-ware based education is here to stay, it is not only going to strengthen the spirit of community as a whole in our society but also improve the value of the human resource at an individual level thus resulting in a more concrete foundation upon which the future of our civilization will be built.
References
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[1] Marrou, H., Szyliowicz, J. S., Naka, A., Mukerji, S., Chen, T. H., & Shimahara, N. (2017, April 14). Education. Retrieved September 12, 2017,
[2] Chen ZhenghaoBrandon AlcornGayle ChristensenNicholas ErikssonDaphne KollerEzekiel J. Emanuel. (2017, March 17). Who's Benefiting from MOOCs, and Why. Retrieved September 12, 2017, from https://hbr.org/2015/09/whos-benefiting-from-moocs-and-why
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