The transformation of the educational ecosystem: by competencies

Here is the background:

• 7 billion connected people produce more knowledge than 1 billion in isolation. There were 1.8 billion of us, most without even a phone, 100 years ago.

• This knowledge leads to innovations, the expansion of our possibilities, and an increase in the complexity of societies.

So the pace of innovation continues to accelerate and the level of sophistication to increase with the effect that the amount of knowledge to be mastered increases beyond our personal learning abilities and the useful life of that knowledge shortens. Who still programs in Cobol or Fortran? Who knows how to prepare a Petri dish?

New skills

In this context, the duration of training courses is necessarily shortening, their number is increasing and the use of digital technologies is becoming more and more necessary. The specialization of individuals, companies and even regions is intensifying. We will have to learn more specialized things. For you, for me and for them it will not be the same; we will therefore need to collaborate more often.

The basic skills in text comprehension and analysis extend to image, audio and video since audio and video are asserting themselves as the media of choice in this era of connected mobility, This trend is asserting itself as well on the side of Internet research (YouTube) as well as the sale of audiobooks and listening to podcasts.

Writing, scripting and programming capabilities are following suit as multimedia, interactivity, robotics and artificial intelligence spill over from the virtual or the industrial and penetrate the everyday.

Finally, skills surrounding languages, social integration, organization and negotiation are increasingly needed, in all countries and in all settings. The renegotiation of the sharing of resources and revenue sources caused by the "disruption" erected as a business model is becoming necessary. You speak of uberization?

Meeting needs creatively

From elementary school to university, from general education to vocational training, we see phenomena arising in response to these obvious needs. Individualization of teaching, fablabs and hackatons, Moocs and Spocs (Small private open courses) and other forms of online training, the decline in popularity of general 3 or 4 year degrees, collaborative training spaces, library transformation, flipped classrooms, and so on.

If we imagine teaching the way we did as children, we won't be much help. If we continue to train teachers by discipline instead of making them pedagogues, we will go astray, Specialists produce content, pedagogues make sure we assimilate it. While specializations are effervescent, the principles of learning remain stable.

If we think of funding education on the same criteria as before, such as class attendance or age of individuals, the formula will only generate frustration. Funding efforts to teach skills, the ones that will be needed, is probably a better way to go.

Bref, if we want to make education popular and valued, we will offer people what they need, which is skills to operate in this world. You build your confidence on your skills, you become more tolerant with education.

Completion of learning is the ability to achieve something with what one has learned. What one will have to achieve changes. We are beginning to understand this.

Illustration: julgeiger - Pixabay

References

Association of American Publishers
In the first 3 months of 2016, E-book sales fell by 21.8 percent.
Hardback books declined 8.5%
Sales of Digital Audiobooks rose by 35.3 percent.
http://the-digital-reader.com/2016/09/20/aap-reports-ebook-total-revenue-first-quarter/

YouTube - The 2nd Largest Search Engine - Infographic
https://www.mushroomnetworks.com/infographics/youtube---the-2nd-largest-search-engine-infographic