Future of Learning Top Reads for week of Mar 23 2020
“Regulatory barriers to online tools will fall,” by Katherine Mangu-Ward, in “Coronavirus Will Change the World Permanently. Here’s How,” on Politico.com
“COVID-19 will sweep away many of the artificial barriers to moving more of our lives online. […] The resistance […] to allowing partial homeschooling or online learning for K-12 kids has been swept away by necessity. It will be near-impossible to put that genie back in the bottle in the fall, with many families finding that they prefer full or partial homeschooling or online homework. For many college students, returning to an expensive dorm room on a depopulated campus will not be appealing, forcing massive changes in a sector that has been ripe for innovation for a long time.”
Why does this matter to the future of learning?
Schools that learn lessons from this moment may build in regular days (once a week?) in the 2020-21 school year when students will learn in virtual spaces.
Not only will this approach leverage the best of what virtual learning can offer, but also build a school’s capacity to shift to full-time virtual learning when—not if—the next great disruption happens.
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“Enrollment Headaches From Coronavirus Are Many. They Won’t Be Relieved Soon,” by Karin Fischer, in The Chronicle of Higher Education
“For American colleges at the height of the admissions season, the outbreak of the contagious respiratory illness is forcing them to work on parallel tracks. On one, it’s business as usual. On the other, they are planning for contingencies, including the possibility that Covid-19, the coronavirus’s formal name, could prevent large groups of international students from enrolling next fall.
“A sudden decline, even a temporary one, in overseas enrollments could deprive colleges of the academic, cultural, and social benefits they bring. It could also be an enormous financial blow to many institutions, which have come to rely on international students and their tuition dollars.”
Why does this matter to the future of learning?
Substitute “independent schools” for “colleges,” and the above describes the situation for independent schools that enroll international students.
A business model that depends on full-pay-plus (ie, international families who pay the full tuition plus a premium) is more fragile than ever.
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“Hard Reset: What Will Be New Post Pandemic,” by Tom Vander Ark, in Forbes
“10 things that will be new and different post-pandemic:
Big class of 2040
More remote work
More personalized competency-based learning
More community connected project-based learning
A new frame of meaningful measures
More home-based and hybrid learning
Fewer expensive schools and colleges
Continuity of learning
Better safety net
New mutuality.”
Why does this matter to the future of learning?
#s 1, 2, 6, 7, and 8 are all but guaranteed. Those alone will cause a significant shift in education for years to come.
Think about that for a minute.
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Question of the week:
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