An Idea To Replace 100-Year Old Education System Of Industrial Era With Personalised Education
Qriyo is India's first managed home tuition app which enables its users to obtain online tutoring for School tuition, Competition Exams, Yoga, Music, Dance, Art & Crafts and Languages.With changing times, there is a need to replace over 100-year old education system of industrial era with a personalised education. The subject of personalized education in present times has become a raging debate. Basically, the current model of education was born in the industrial age with a one-size-fits-all approach. It was designed to produce factory workers, who know how to read and write, along with topics that could help them in their everyday lives with Accounts & Maths. The education system emphasized memorization, discipline, fixed routine and working alone. A total of eight hours of school time, fixed time for lunch and recreation, Grade A, Preferential treatment to performers, Uniform, and many others, all were designed to prepare an industrial labour.
However, this is not meeting the needs of our knowledge economy. The skills, values, characteristics and knowledge they need to thrive in our modern society are very different from 100 years ago. Today, we don't need employees to do repetitive mundane tasks with precision, but we need problem solvers, innovators, and leaders. In fact, much higher percentage of individuals will choose diverse career path such as entrepreneurship, freelancing, consulting and many more similar topics where they need to wear multiple hats with different skills which schools are not preparing them for.
The current system is extremely rigid due to economic and social benefit of controlling authorities, as well as immense efforts required to transform the same. But the trend of more customized personalized education is coming in and no one can stop it. Let's explore the needs of millennial students and know how ready our current ecosystem is to bring-in change. As this topic has triggered a major debate, we need to dive into the solution to ensure the problem is completely understood before coming to any conclusion on this topic. Let's discuss what kind of personalisation is required in today's times:
Interest: You can't teach fish to climb a tree, they were born to swim. Still the current education system does the same. Our choice of learning can be what we want to learn to study and excel in; it can be a combination of Biology and Accounts or it can be a specialisation in water colour or else Music and Maths. "In a 45 minutes period, the teacher has to teach 30 students in a class who come from different IQ levels. There are some who are on the far right of the bell-curve and there are others
who are struggling on far left. But the teacher only teaches keeping in mind the ones in between the bell-curve. She teaches only for the average IQ level of the class," says Gaurav Mundra, CEO, myly School Management App.
What kind of personalization is required?
1. IQ: Everyone has different basic IQ; hence, they have different grasping rate of learning; so they learn at different pace.
2. Mode of Learning: Also, the mode of learning preferences are different, with some students preferring listening over reading, some students have their preferred time for learning and many more.
3. Language: The language preferences also differ from student to student.
4. Attention: Different students have different attention spans when it comes to learning and grasping.
One needs to see a huge opportunity in terms of enhancing creativity and unrealised talent of students. What it leads to is huge opportunity cost in terms of immense loss of creativity and unrealized talent. We need to find relevant startups in following categories:
1. Psychometrics/Talent Identification/Potential Mapping
It explores ways to identify what a child needs, what he wants to learn and what he can be good at. "Identifying child's brain DNA is the key! Saying the kid is weak in Mathematics is absurd. As there is Algebra & Geometry in it, In Geometry, there is Trigonometry and the kid might be weak in Pythogorous theorem of this particular chapter. Until and unless the weakness is identified at concept level, it is difficult to find a remedy and personalised solution to the same," asserts Jatin Solanki, CEO, Edu-is-fun.
2. Customized Content/AI ML Aided Learning Tracking Tools
Huge library of AI enabled, well tagged and customizable content should be made available in different languages for different difficulty levels and delivery plat-forms. Content in terms of Videos, E-books, Interactive games, VR, learning tools should be served. The technology is far behind, as well as content. So, current gap can be filled by one-on-one personalised learning over online or offline modes. As with one student, a tutor is much more flexible in accommodating the above needs. Multiple ventures are being created on demand and curriculum-based content, providing Universal Access to education/Videos learning tools/Social impact learning platforms such as Khan Academy, Coursera, Ted Talks, and many others are coming-up. New age schools such as Gurukul (Gujarat) are breaking the shackles of board-based learning and equipping students to solve any kind of problems. They are teaching students carpentry to agriculture to programming at school level.
3. Adaptive Assessment
Current memory based, multiple choice assessment tools are rudimentary and do not capture even fraction of child's imagination or potential. They need to be customised and designed to accommodate the personalised education demands. Today, plethora of startups are claiming to have developed adaptive assessment platform, but they are far less effective without a comprehensive backing of customised and personalised content.
Schools of Future
The future will not be devoid of schools, parents will still need safe places for their kids where they can collaborate, discuss and experience. Schools will no longer be places where one way stream of information is broadcasted; it will be a hub of learning, collaboration and sharing. The teachers of tomorrow will be facilitators and counsellors. With task of learning about student needs and enabling them with right set of tools, courses and equipments, the current education system of Finland must be studied.
What kind of personalization is required?
1. IQ: Everyone has different basic IQ; hence, they have different grasping rate of learning; so they learn at different pace.
2. Mode of Learning: Also, the mode of learning preferences are different, with some students preferring listening over reading, some students have their preferred time for learning and many more.
3. Language: The language preferences also differ from student to student.
4. Attention: Different students have different attention spans when it comes to learning and grasping.
One needs to see a huge opportunity in terms of enhancing creativity and unrealised talent of students. What it leads to is huge opportunity cost in terms of immense loss of creativity and unrealized talent. We need to find relevant startups in following categories:
In the near future, schools will no longer be places where one way stream of information is broadcasted; it will be a hub of learning, collaboration and sharing
1. Psychometrics/Talent Identification/Potential Mapping
It explores ways to identify what a child needs, what he wants to learn and what he can be good at. "Identifying child's brain DNA is the key! Saying the kid is weak in Mathematics is absurd. As there is Algebra & Geometry in it, In Geometry, there is Trigonometry and the kid might be weak in Pythogorous theorem of this particular chapter. Until and unless the weakness is identified at concept level, it is difficult to find a remedy and personalised solution to the same," asserts Jatin Solanki, CEO, Edu-is-fun.
2. Customized Content/AI ML Aided Learning Tracking Tools
Huge library of AI enabled, well tagged and customizable content should be made available in different languages for different difficulty levels and delivery plat-forms. Content in terms of Videos, E-books, Interactive games, VR, learning tools should be served. The technology is far behind, as well as content. So, current gap can be filled by one-on-one personalised learning over online or offline modes. As with one student, a tutor is much more flexible in accommodating the above needs. Multiple ventures are being created on demand and curriculum-based content, providing Universal Access to education/Videos learning tools/Social impact learning platforms such as Khan Academy, Coursera, Ted Talks, and many others are coming-up. New age schools such as Gurukul (Gujarat) are breaking the shackles of board-based learning and equipping students to solve any kind of problems. They are teaching students carpentry to agriculture to programming at school level.
3. Adaptive Assessment
Current memory based, multiple choice assessment tools are rudimentary and do not capture even fraction of child's imagination or potential. They need to be customised and designed to accommodate the personalised education demands. Today, plethora of startups are claiming to have developed adaptive assessment platform, but they are far less effective without a comprehensive backing of customised and personalised content.
Schools of Future
The future will not be devoid of schools, parents will still need safe places for their kids where they can collaborate, discuss and experience. Schools will no longer be places where one way stream of information is broadcasted; it will be a hub of learning, collaboration and sharing. The teachers of tomorrow will be facilitators and counsellors. With task of learning about student needs and enabling them with right set of tools, courses and equipments, the current education system of Finland must be studied.
