Previously education could only be accessed in formal classrooms, learning was centralized and controlled the government or another governing body. However, the educational system is beginning to become decentralized, the widespread adoption of technology has given way to a new era of education, E-learning. E-learning is an architectural innovation to the education system and has created a new business model that leverages technical competencies that were previously under utilized. Currently, E-learning is predominantly being used outside of the classroom setting as a complement to the traditional learning. However, E-learning has the potential to be leveraged within traditional classrooms to enhance learning or to possibly take over completely.
The current classroom based learning is inadequate as it is prohibitive, rigid and inaccessible. Traditional brick and mortar classrooms are costly to maintain and teachers are expensive to employ. Curriculum is hard to change due to the scale of the education system as well as the hierarchical processes involved. Lastly, remote locations suffer from subpar education due in lack of qualified teachers. E-learning solves the cost issues by not either requiring classrooms or allowing classroom sizes to be much larger enabling the costs to be distributed. E-learning barriers to entry are low therefore many business compete keeping costs low and quality high in their pursuit of profitability, this open market allows businesses to compete and only the best online courses will survive. Lastly, with only an internet connection students can access quality education. Online courses are being used to enhance learning and reach previously unreachable markets.
Technologies are constantly emerging and rapidly changing the world around us. The current education system is not agile enough to deal with the continuously changing environment. Traditional teachers are educated in their specialization during their schooling, therefore for teachers to learn and teach an entirely new subject would take time and re-education. E-learning allows specialist to teach the courses and disseminate their expert knowledge, eliminating the need for teachers to learn or re-learn subjects. Not only will E-learning enable more agility within the education system but it will allow for a wider variety of courses as subject matter specialists can be utilized to create more courses than ever before.
Furthermore, studies have found that the current standardized one-size-fits-all strategy to education run by the government is not effective. Studies show that students learn differently “Some students fatigue after 50 minutes, others after 15, and there’s no way to adjust for that in a real-time environment.” Says Forbes magazine. E-learning enables an enhanced experience as students have more autonomy and can pause and rewind classes, allowing student to learn at their own pace. Additionally, E-learning can incorporate learning new techniques to learn what work best for students such as gamification to aid in keeping students attention and virtual or augmented reality to help students learn by doing. These options will allow students to not only learn at their own pace but cater to the way they personally learn best whether it be visual, auditory or kinesthetic learning.
The decentralization of education and the move away from the traditional classroom learning will bring value back to the students, who will now receive an education that is relevant to the ever changing world and tailored to their own personal learning styles. As technology continues to improve our workforce will need to be re-skilled to keep up, requiring our education channels to be even more agile than ever before, if our learning does not keep up with technology we will become obsolete.
Incorporating E-learning will reduce costs as teachers will have more resources at their disposal and be able to teach larger classes. The burden of teaching will be significantly reduced as recordings can be played multiple times freeing up the teachers time for other activities. Furthermore, there will be no need to rely on a single teacher as a generalist as classes can be taught by subject matter experts.
However, there are drawbacks to moving towards the E-learning form of education such as concerns around sociability, lack of knowledge transfer, lack of classroom pressure to perform and loosing the ability to work in teams. These drawbacks unless addressed will hinder adoption and reduce the value that classroom alternatives provide. The adoption of E-learning has to overcome major hurdles such as proven viability as well as strong established unions. In order for e-learning to overtake the traditional form of education we will need to trust that the education received from these online sources bests the education received by our trusted teachers. As the E-learning market matures I believe this will happen as rating systems and other forms of quality control will be developed. The disruption to the traditional education system will not happen overnight as E-learning is still improving and will be a slow integration as it overcomes its many hurdles. For the time being E-learning will act as a growing complement to traditional education channels offering specialize courses and certifications for subjects not taught in traditional schools. Schools have begun to incorporate their own versions of E-learning however I believe eventually schools will begin to incorporate external courses once their benefits are proven.
In conclusion, the decentralization of education from traditional brick and mortar classrooms to E-learning will bring value to students and firms as it will enhance learning while reducing costs. The adoption of more technologies, such as virtual reality and 5G technologies, will fuel the adoption of E-learning. As these technologies will allow E-learning courses to better simulate a classroom environments enabling it to overcome its adoption obstacles.
Sources:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/44832286_Educational_Decentralization_Issues_and_Challenges
https://www.ciesin.columbia.edu/decentralization/English/Issues/Education.html
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/09/is-online-learning-the-future-of-education/
http://www.elearningnc.gov/about_elearning/what_is_elearning/
Strategy in the Age of Decentralization 