6 ms·

Ask HN: What do you think will the future of education look like?

11 points by nshr 9y ago

arikr 9y ago
First question to ask: What will be cheap enough to scale to billions of users? This question is important because the future of education will look like what most people use to get educated, and most people will be in India/China/Africa. The biggest education providers today are Google/YouTube/Quora/Reddit/Stack Exchange. I don't think this will change. These things scale, people want to use them, and they seem to work. [This question is subjective depending on your definition of what education is and what goals it serves]
pcunite 9y ago
It will have distributed and virtual aspects.
swah 9y ago
Like Youtube right now + some ways to assess your skills.
maximus999 9y ago
students can choose what topic they want to learn and lecturers
ghjkl1 9y ago
Hands on instruction with good student-teacher ratios for the elite, MOOCs for the poor. Also, the MOOCs will sell user data and serve ads.
shahbaby 9y ago
Pretty much the same as it is right now except more competitive. A degree will be even less valuable but even more necessary as a requirement. MOOCs will grow more popular but they won't replace traditional education.
pedrodelfino 9y ago
This video answers to your question and it is pretty cool: https://youtu.be/7vsCAM17O-M https://youtu.be/7vsCAM17O-M
mbrock 9y ago
Some combination of: 1. A tinkering mentality a la DIY as educational institutions fail to keep up with accelerating progress; as developing world grows more important on the world stage; and as kids in the affluent world get bored. 2. Machine learning turning into machine teaching, like Google Now but for retention and discovery, with aspects of Duolingo, Khan Academy, probably with social gamification and sharing ("Billy just learned these basic facts about accounting!") 3. Digital economy acceleration, probably with blockchain tokens, leading to a huge incentivization of people to produce their own educational material, mentor others, etc. Imagine a bunch of creative people making videos and stuff, in global efficient competition, and being directly rewarded for upvotes/views with tokens, maybe even community-specific tokens with different exchange rates to other communities (see Steemit for a glimpse of this).
SirLJ 9y ago
How far in the future we are talking about?
rubythis 9y ago
1. No colleges 2. Videos like Khan Academy 3. Teachers help students solve problems, not waste their time doing the job of a repeating the same thing over and over. 4. Teachers will (hopefully) be compensated on their ability to engage with and motivate and connect with their students.

11 points by nshr 9y ago

First question to ask: What will be cheap enough to scale to billions of users? This question is important because the future of education will look like what most people use to get educated, and most people will be in India/China/Africa. The biggest education providers today are Google/YouTube/Quora/Reddit/Stack Exchange. I don't think this will change. These things scale, people want to use them, and they seem to work. [This question is subjective depending on your definition of what education is and what goals it serves]

pcunite 9y ago

It will have distributed and virtual aspects.

swah 9y ago

Like Youtube right now + some ways to assess your skills.

maximus999 9y ago

students can choose what topic they want to learn and lecturers

ghjkl1 9y ago

Hands on instruction with good student-teacher ratios for the elite, MOOCs for the poor. Also, the MOOCs will sell user data and serve ads.

shahbaby 9y ago

Pretty much the same as it is right now except more competitive. A degree will be even less valuable but even more necessary as a requirement. MOOCs will grow more popular but they won't replace traditional education.

pedrodelfino 9y ago

This video answers to your question and it is pretty cool: https://youtu.be/7vsCAM17O-M https://youtu.be/7vsCAM17O-M

mbrock 9y ago

Some combination of: 1. A tinkering mentality a la DIY as educational institutions fail to keep up with accelerating progress; as developing world grows more important on the world stage; and as kids in the affluent world get bored. 2. Machine learning turning into machine teaching, like Google Now but for retention and discovery, with aspects of Duolingo, Khan Academy, probably with social gamification and sharing ("Billy just learned these basic facts about accounting!") 3. Digital economy acceleration, probably with blockchain tokens, leading to a huge incentivization of people to produce their own educational material, mentor others, etc. Imagine a bunch of creative people making videos and stuff, in global efficient competition, and being directly rewarded for upvotes/views with tokens, maybe even community-specific tokens with different exchange rates to other communities (see Steemit for a glimpse of this).

SirLJ 9y ago

How far in the future we are talking about?

rubythis 9y ago

1. No colleges 2. Videos like Khan Academy 3. Teachers help students solve problems, not waste their time doing the job of a repeating the same thing over and over. 4. Teachers will (hopefully) be compensated on their ability to engage with and motivate and connect with their students.