Future of Learning

Could Khan Academy be falling into the same trap as other tech innovations that best serve a better educated and affluent population?

This last decade of the music industry presages the coming decade of education. Choice is expanding at every level, from pre-k to graduate school. The individual course, rather than the degree, is becoming the unit of content. And universities, the record labels of education, are facing increased pressure to unbundle their services. So what will the future of education look like?

The price of content will freefall over the next seven years.

Education will be personalized.

MOOC platform providers are also “discovering” that students want to pay for credentials and not learning experiences. This means that many of those companies are tying their fortunes to the issuing of certificates and badge-like credentials. This business model will succeed as long as MOOCs are a tiny fraction of their partner university’s offerings but will run into significant headwinds once adoption grows and they compete more directly with the core institutional financial models.

“scalable educational experiences.”

bally connected and mixed-modality learning communities can be enhanced and accelerated by MOOC platforms and, more importantly, new thinking. Such possibilities more accurately reflect the thinking of the earliest MOOC pioneers, George Siemens and Steven Downes. These new possibilities will take advantage of the best of what we can do in physical and virtual spaces. Expect to see new learning genres and expanded access to the deep knowledge generated by our great universities.