Looking at the Future

What will online and blended learning look like in 2033?

This feels like such a simple question that does not have anywhere near a simple answer. Online and blended learning, if based on the technology that we currently have, could potentially look completely different depending on new and emerging technologies that are a distant dream in the present.

Big Data

I am personally incredibly interested in Big Data and how it can potentially work for educators and education in the future. If you are unfamiliar, Big Data refers to the vast amounts of data that is being collected off the internet all the time. Imagine what you do in one day and how you interact with the internet: through the computer, email, social media, apps, etc. In this modern, technological world, Big Data seeks to collect all the data possible to provide whatever specific data sets a person might be looking for. It is currently being used by corporations as an advertisement tool. Have you ever been given an advertisement on social media and wondered how the heck they knew what to advertise to you? Big Data.

I think what I find most interesting about Big Data is the potential applications for education. In 10 years, education might be fully virtual or exist in some virtual reality space. If everything that a learner does during the course of their education can be measured and data collected from it there is no limit to what educators might be able to learn. 

For example, during an educational course, Big Data could potentially know what information a learner is comfortable with or not based on how they write their papers, the amount of times they change their answer to a certain question on a test, or even what they are searching for while working on assignments. This information could lead educators to being able to predict what knowledge or skills are going to trip learners up, what information they need to cover more in-depth and what they can skim. The potential information that educators will have at their fingertips is astounding.

Intuitive Education

Big Data allows for the extensive gathering of knowledge and data points, and I believe that in the future this will lead to a more intuitive type of education. Whether there is a facilitator leading the learning or the learning is taking place in a virtual classroom, learning may be incredibly intuitive in the future. I envision that there will be programs that exist that educators will be able to provide information on what topic is being learned, and the program will be able to determine the difficulty level that an individual learner is at and how to challenge them further. Additionally, programs like this may be able to change difficulty levels in real time so that the learner is constantly progressing without being told they are right or wrong.

Intuitive education might be the thing of the future, but the possibilities of what technology might be able to accomplish are incredible. It might be nearly impossible to answer what online or hybrid learning might look like in 10 years because we may not be able to fathom what technology could do for us by that time.

Here’s to dreaming big!