1997 Change in Education

Change in Education

Education can not anymore be one-directional teaching without the outcome assessment but has to be based on learning with quantitative measures of individual learning. One teacher has taught a group of students in past, in future a group of teachers will teach one student because of the revolution in educational tools.

Educational market has grown exponentially if one follows the growth of population. 1952 there were 2.7 billion people, this year we hit the six billion mark. Similar steep increase has occurred in the speed of information exchange.

Electronic Education will influence the present methods and will also create more competition in education. Reports, term papers are being downloaded from the net, originality can not be confirmed, evaluation will be more and more based on oral communication skills.

But the revolution will occur with educational material. Highly visual digital medium will increase the Quality of the educational material, it can be accessed globally, the students will request it, the professors have to follow, improve their own material which will not anymore be professor’s property, but also in the control of educational leadership.

This educational form will just be a new type of a book. Tim Berner-Lee, the inventor of the web (when at CERN Physics Lab, Geneva), wanted along his idealism to make the web as a public resource. Course libraries will be available in educational alliances.

Professors will start to work together to optimize educational material, similarly as the coaches optimize their evaluation in sports, and with the share of the educational material share, eventually the lecture preparation time will decrease and the time for personal education will increase.

Electronic book is strongly visual and effectively highlighted, and this easy access will finally increase the possibilities to read before hand and prepare student for the actual learning process.

Hyperlinked education will connect easily to any material needed for optimal learning. Thus, for instance mathematics can be taught logically with chemistry as the problem appears in the chemistry education.

Teaching will proceed more effectively than writing on blackboard and the feed back for the learning process can be evaluated properly.

Online discussion groups and chat rooms will improve global team concept will offer opportunities for effective tutoring. Even the shy ones finally get personal education (internet finally offers even the Finns an opportunity to discuss with each other).

Before one teacher for a group of students, now a group of teachers for one student, and this education will form a stable basis for life-long learning. Professor Ifay Chang has created a I-CARE-program for conferencing and virtual class rooms and will be the basis for Poly-education in the future.

Education of instrumentation, characterization methods can be learned while being at home, as the simulation experiments will provide the access to the instrument. Digitized information in the computer controlled instrumentation is already available.

Virtual chemistry laboratories are simulated laboratory experiments which will be used during the lectures in stead of examples. Student will do pH titration in this simulated manner and will be exposed to a vast variety of parameter control in an effective period. This conceptual learning is unique for those who do not have access to experimental laboratories such as urban high school students and handicapped students.

Remote-Access Teleoperated Experiments will not be virtual but actual Robot-Assisted Experiments which can be internet-operated. The familiarity in the experimental setup and data-analysis will also maximize the quality aspect in real experiment, which now can be designed to focus on high quality result.