Will Telepresence change the way we learn?

Imagine you’re in a live classroom of 500 students with students located in geographically dispersed areas – Africa to Iceland to India to Australia to USA. Now imagine that you have multiple teachers who are also located at geographically dispersed areas, with all of them delivering parts of lecture to all of you in real-time. Before you start thinking that all this is science fiction, let me tell you that this type of classroom instruction is actively taking place across the world. The technology enabling it is called telepresence.  The origins of this term can be traced to 1980, when cognitive scientist Marvin Minsky coined this term in an article that outlined his vision for a technology that would a allow a remote participant to feel as if s/he was present at a different location.

Simply put, in current terms telepresence is a technology that allows people located at geographically separated areas to connect with each other in real-time via rich audio and video. It is a type of disruptive innovation having the ability to change the way learning takes place by transforming a classroom into a world-class learning center that provides a highly engaging and impactful experience for learners.

Let’s look at some of the advantages of using telepresence in education:

1. Scalability: Telepresence helps educational institutions scale expertise by providing students access to a larger pool of subject matter experts from across the world. It also allows institutions to expand their reach to students globally through their existing faculty.

2. Greater efficiency: Telepresence presents savings in cost and time for both students and teachers.  Both teachers and students don’t have to travel to multiple locations to deliver or access learning. Additionally, since a large audience can be connected in real time, the learning cost for student is lower than that in traditional classrooms.

3. Better Collaboration and Calibration: Telepresence helps in bringing diverse groups of student and teacher teams together. You can match a particular set of students to a specific set of teachers based on assessments and learning preferences.

4. Reduction in Carbon footprint:  By reducing travel, educational institutions can move faster in achieving their environmental sustainability goals.

So who’s providing telepresence solutions?

Companies such as Cisco, Polycom, and Logitech are the dominant players. The market size of telepresence is estimated to $4 billion. Cisco leads the market, having installed more than 1900 telepresence systems and successfully providing solutions to education institutions across the world. From K-12 to higher education institutions, the interest seems to be a growing interest in using this technology.  While, Duke University is one of the early adopters using telepresence on a large scale, Wharton recently joined the bandwagon.

However, critics of telepresence argue that there are various challenges facing adoption of telepresence solutions. The high fixed costs of setting up telepresence systems (average cost is $300k for a 6 seater telepresence room, not including the costs of owning that space), the lack of interoperability between different telepresence systems (polyfam’s telepresence with Cisco’s),  the advancements in cloud computing, and the use of smartphones as a learning platform all have the potential to impact the sustained use of telepresence systems.  

Verdict: Telepresence is poised to make learning more flexible, adaptable, engaging, and location agnostic. The success of telepresence depends on how much the providers are able to lower the setup costs, how effectively they use the cloud to find ways to better manage these systems, and how well they merge this technology with mobile platforms.

Education@Mobileplatforms.com

According to a recent article by The Guardian, the number of mobile phone subscribers is estimated at 6.5 billion globally. Smartphones last year grew at an annual rate of 45%, a higher rate than feature phones. The market for tablets shows an equally promising picture with annual shipments at 128 million, having a year-on-year growth rate of 78.4%. What’s more, in 2012 the number of smartphones sold was higher than the number of computers sold. In 2013, tablet sales are expected to surpass desktop sales for the first time. Given these torrid growth rates, smartphones and tablets present a tremendous platform for learning.  Apple recently announced a new milestone for its iTunes University digital education outlet and iPads. It sold over 8 million iPads to educational institutions and just crossed 1 billion downloads for iTunes University content. Apple further states that over 1200 higher education institutes and over 1200 K-12 schools host over 2500 public courses on iTunes. Some of the popular courses on iTunes have over 250,000 students enrolled. Worldwide mobile learning market is expected to reach 9.1 billion by 2015

With these figures in mind, let’s look at some ways through which mobile platforms are impacting education:

1. Access Learning, Anytime, Anywhere: Mobile platforms allow learners, to learn-on-the go and On-demand. Advancements in mobile technologies allow learners to access high quality content on their palm whenever they want. From MOOCs to classroom assessments, learners can network and collaborate with other learners across various demographics. All one needs is a mobile phone with a network connection.

2. Flipped Classrooms: Many teachers are adopting ways by which their lectures can be video-recorded, allowing students to listen to their lectures outside the classroom. These videos then serve as homework for the students, while in-classroom activities are restricted to the teacher serving as a guide for practice questions and some re-teaching.

3. BYOD (Bring Your Own Device Policy): According to 2012’s Horizon Report, more than 61% of American over the age of 12 own a mobile device, with 44% specifically owning a smartphone. An increasing number ofschools are adopting the BYOD policy that allows students to bring a mobile device (smartphone/tablet/laptop) of their choice to the classroom. While many educators believe that this represents a significant step in the advancement of learning tools, others argue that such devices cause distractions for students and can disrupt the classroom learning experience.

4. Student Response Systems: Various mobile applications empower teachers to engage with the class by tracking student responses in the classroom.  One such example is Socrative that allows teachers to connect with students through a series of educational exercises and games.

5. Applications for students with special needs: Specific mobile learning applications are being built to help learners with special needs. According to Dr. Howard Shane, (Director, Communication Enhancement), Boston children’s hospital, assisting students with special needs is a complicated process. He believes that the iPad is a game changer, as it allows special needs learners to understand, learn, and communicate better.

Bottom line: In today’s digital world, it is hard to ignore the expectations that students bring to classrooms. The future of learning is clearly on the hand-held device.

Are online courses impactful?

‘In economics, things take longer to happen than you think they will, and then they happen faster than you thought they could’

                                                           - Rudiger Dornbusch

I am sure most of you who are reading this post would have heard of some sort of education/training that can be taken on the Internet. Online learning has several meanings and can connote anything from a single course taken via the Internet, to a full-fledged virtual school; to a blended-learning model that combines face-to-face and online instruction. While online education seems to be the new fad for learners across all age groups, it is important to understand the real-world impact it is making on the learning eco-system.

Market Size and Opportunity

Let’s start by looking at the U.S. education system. Like most education systems worldwide, the US education system is divided into two major components: K-12 (primary and secondary education) and Higher Education (undergraduate and above). According to Sloan Consortium’s recent report, more than 6 million American higher education students are enrolled in at least one online course. This figure roughly translates into roughly 32% of the higher education market, with an annual growth rate of 10.3%. The market size for online learning in the K-12 segment looks equally promising with 3.8 million American K-12 students, translating into 5% of the K-12 market, with an annual growth rate of 15% along with a market opportunity of $2.4 billion. An increasing number of educators and administrators are turning to online learning platforms. 77% of educators believed that the learning outcomes of online courses met or exceeded those oftraditional face-to-face models.  The success of these courses is further explained in a 2010 report by the US Department of Education, which supports the argument on learning outcomes of online education.

The Economic Impact of Online Education

A recent report by College Board shows that the average tuition at public colleges and universities increased by 27% beyond the rate of inflation between 2007-08 and 2012-13. According to Peter Thiel, Partner, Founders Fund, students in the U.S. don’t get their money’s worth from traditional college instruction. He further states that the education bubble is waiting to burst due to rising student debt, which currently goes into trillions of dollars. Many people pay high fees for education as they see it as a form of insurance, but sadly that view is rapidly diminishing with a growing number of people not finding employment after graduation, directly impacting the country’s economy.  Hence, one of the main factors contributing to the growth of online education is the low cost of these courses. Ranging from free courses to a few thousand dollars, these courses offer a wide range of prices that are substantially lower than their physical counterparts.  

Despite the enthusiasm surrounding online learning, there is a growing amount of angst from its uninhibited usage. Michael A. Cusumano, a professor at the Sloan School of Management at M.I.T., in his article warns that we need to seriously consider the economic impacts of these lower priced courses, especially free online courses, as they have the potential to wreck the traditional university system. He argues that if more number of universities and colleges join the free online education movement, it will set the threshold price of the industry at zero, which would become commonly accepted and difficult to undo. Cusumano is not alone in his skepticism; many others believe that online learning cannot replace the experience of face-to-face learning. Data shows that approximately 10% of students enrolled in online courses complete them, and only 9.4% of American schools are planning to incorporate MOOCs into their curriculum. On the other hand, social scientists such as Sherry Turkle in her book AloneTogether notes that online networks do not provide the same kind of engagement as physical interaction, and increased usage of these networks promotes loneliness and inauthenticity.  Optometrists also point out to the adverse effects resulting from prolonged usage of computers. Research points out that ComputerVision Syndrome affects 50-90% of people who work at a computer screen.

Bottom Line – Online learning is here to stay. However, its rapid growth cannot completely displace face-to-face learning. The most impactful way forward is to not only make online learning more participatory, but also blend it with physical instruction to provide hybrid learning. More studies will hopefully unravel what could potentially become the best practices in hybrid learning.  

Have you heard of MOOCs?

‘I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand’

                                                    - Confucius

MOOC is the acronym for Massive Open Online Course, an ICT platform developed 5 years back in response to developments in Open Educational Resources. The idea is simple. Provide learners who share a common desire for learning a particular course, a platform where they can participate, collaborate, and engage with each other. The principle being that information is everywhere and learning is just a click away. So how does this platform work? Let’s see some of its characteristics:

• MOOC, as the name is suggests is an online course having most of the basic elements of an offline course: facilitators, course material, a start date and an end date.
• It is OPEN. And that means it’s accessible to anyone with a computer and an decent Internet connection. Most MOOC platforms do not require payments, so people are free to participate and learn. However, a learner would need to pay in case he needs course credits from a university. Work is openly shared amongst all learners in the network.
• It is PARTICIPATORY. Learners are not asked to complete specific assignments, rather engage with others by contributing web material to the topic of study. Apart from acquiring knowledge, learners build a strong network with the people participating in the learning process.
• It is DISTRIBUTED. All the material is connected through various social media channels such as YouTube, Twitter, Blogs, etc. This material is divided into pockets and clusters based on the area of study. It is important to note that learners have complete flexibility in defining their learning path and so they can customize their learning path within different subject clusters. What's more, learning paths continuously develop as people add content, building a large, distributed knowledge base.
• It supports LIFELONG NETWORKED LEARNING. People who desire independence and their own workspace can continuously learn at their own pace and maintain the network even after the learning is over.
• A MOOC lets you choose what you want to learn, how you want to learn, and your desired learning outcomes so that only you can tell whether you have been successful.

So who’s providing MOOCs? There are several MOOC providers that offer a variety of courses. From the basics of MS Excel to learning how to knit, you can not only choose from a large range of classes, but also request for classes or teach them as well!  Most MOOC providers allow users to download learning materials provided the data is reused strictly for non-commercial purposes and full attribution is given to the creator of the content.

MOOC providers differ in their approach and delivery model. Companies such as Coursera strive towards making world-class learning accessible to everyone. To achieve this mission, Coursera  provides courses that are delivered by sought after instructors from world-class universities such as Princeton, Johns Hopkins, Stanford, Columbia, and Duke. More than 60 universities are part of Coursera’s network. Here’s a sample of an upcoming session on Operations Management taught by Christian Terwiesch from the The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

Another hugely popular website, KhanAcademy, has revolutionized the concept of MOOCs by providing videos in short lecture formats. It boasts of more than 3000 videos, largely created by its founder Salman Khan. Seeing these providers, a growing number of universities are joining the bandwagon to deliver courses from their faculty. Currently, all universities cite this initiative as a part of their social responsibility and as a means of technology transfer thatreaches a broader audience.

While companies such as Coursera and Khan Academy provide free learning material, others such as Udacity, Udemy, and Skillshare have monetized the MOOC platforms, and are backed by VC firms. In the weeks to come, I shall discuss the business models of some of these companies, but for now it is safe to say that there is a huge market for commercialized online learning having tremendous implications for diverse employment sectors.

By offering a platform that democratizes learning, MOOCs may well be the future of learning. What MIT’s OpenCourseWare did to content, MOOCs may do to teaching. New features around MOOCs continue to develop, expanding the horizon of learning. Stanford’s MOOC, for example, provides students an opportunity to ask questions to the instructor, with questions being ranked according to their popularity. As one of the popular MOOC instructors at Stanford, Sebastian Thrun, points out that these platforms provide all learners an opportunity to answer questions which they couldn’t get a chance to answer in regular classroom settings, as another student had exercised the opportunity to give the correct answer. Moreover, students can keep practicing until they master the content. According to this NYT article by Tamar Lewin, improvements in technology and the exploding costs of traditional universities may ultimately break the walls of elitist institutions. If the signs are anything to go by, an exciting journey of learning beckons all of us.

I can see my dad smiling.