Contributed by Artur Meyster
Artur Meyster is the founder and CTO at Career Karma. Career Karma helps people who want to become software engineers by matching them with the right coding bootcamp and supporting them as they launch their careers.
The education industry is a shifting sector, and just last year, it started rapidly changing to adapt to the new normal. Until now, it was slow in adopting new technologies. But the changing pace will increase, and these are the trends for the future.
Artificial Intelligence
Artificial intelligence is an attempt to develop computers powerful enough to simulate human intelligence. It has various subsets where scientists can design computer software to simulate learning and understand speech, words, and images. It has a long way to go before reaching the point where robots can talk and discern as we do.
AI can do incredible things with the few advancements engineers have accomplished. For example, it can process massive amounts of information in a matter of seconds. Things that it would take us decades to analyze, an AI software can do with no difficulty at all. In education, it has the potential to change the way we learn.
One of the uses of AI is to increase personalization. Some online learning platforms already use adaptive learning software, which is AI-powered, to change the coursework according to each student’s learning pace. Another use is for chatbots. Those are especially helpful in self-paced courses and can guide students through the lessons. But it can also be used for things like designing the curriculum, grading tests, assessing the efficiency of some methods, and much more.
One of the more helpful applications of AI is to assist students with disabilities. For example, some software can help students to take notes, do homework, and take tests with their voices. When it reaches all the institutions around the world, accessibility will increase tenfold. What makes the processes so easy is due to the complex training of the ML model and how the activation functions work in the background of this model. Moreover, AI can help people with disabilities by enabling them to control devices and perform tasks using gesture recognition or brain-computer interfaces, showcasing how AI can help people with disabilities
Gamification
Gamification has been a growing trend in the last couple of years. It means including the game aspect in the learning process to increase engagement. Some aspects include having a system of points and levels to increase competition and reward-based lessons to encourage students to learn.
The language learning platform Duolingo is a gamification expert. They have over 300 million users worldwide. They use AI software to deliver personalized learning, and their reward systems have helped millions of people to learn a new language. This is not the only platform that uses it, but once this method becomes a common practice at schools and institutions, it will change the way we learn.
Updating for Soft Skills
The education system, at least in the US, has never centered around soft skills. The traditional curriculum focuses on technical skills or what they consider to be useful, like history and gym class. But the last years show us how important it is to develop soft skills that help us overcome hardship.
The Covid-19 pandemic brought an unprecedented situation to our doorstep. Many people were left unprepared without the emotional intelligence and resilience needed to endure last year. Emotional intelligence allows us to recognize our feelings and to manage them. It helps us know what to do with strong emotions instead of letting them overcome your life.
Resilience helps us understand when a situation is out of our control and not let that frustration stop us from the things that need to be done. An education system that teaches these kinds of skills to people from an early stage will produce humans better prepared for the real world.
Labor Market Shift
Another thing that has been happening in the last decade is that the labor market is shifting to society’s new needs. Tech professions are becoming an increasing need, and the education sector hasn’t adjusted to that. Most universities don’t include tech professions outside of computer science or software engineering.
But the industry is in need of many more tech professions. The job to meet the demand has been left to coding bootcamps. But even with many coding bootcamp schools around the country, it isn’t enough. Thus, education has to change and include new career paths.
Conclusion
The future of education will probably be a lot different from what we know today. Artificial intelligence is already making a difference in how we learn by improving the student experience and making it more personalized.
Another trend that is improving engagement is gamification. But the biggest changes we will hopefully see soon are an update on the curriculums at all levels to include teaching people more soft skills and including more technical careers to meet the need for technology.
