The world is changing, and it is said that we must change the way we learn. For a long time, education meant spending a large part of our early years sitting in a classroom absorbing new information so that we could use it wisely later on. Learning in school desks has been the norm since time immemorial until the pandemic fundamentally changed everything. Even before it, there was talk of distance learning, e.g., via video calls, the internet, and with the help of all new technological wonders, but in practice, this was difficult to implement for professors, especially for students. Perhaps those adjustments were lacking because everything happened quite quickly, leaving no time for deeper reflections on how to make this way of learning more accessible to students who were used to doing other things in front of screens.
Return to Classrooms
Fortunately, it did not last long; traditional ways of learning in the classroom quickly returned.
—
—
– Distance learning that we introduced during the pandemic was a solution in an emergency and served its purpose, but it certainly could not yield results that would be entirely satisfactory. Namely, it was an ad hoc solution that mostly involved live video lectures. To talk about distance learning in its entirety, we must know that it includes many other possibilities besides video lectures, a large number of content distribution and communication options offered by advanced distance learning platforms. Distance learning has a future if it is applied as a fully designed solution. Its advantage is that it allows everyone access to learning programs that are not locally available, says the Dean of the Faculty of Economics in Osijek Boris Crnković.
—
The development of soft skills such as active listening and leadership should be included in all curricula, but also offered in the form of lifelong education
—
It is estimated, says Dean Crnković, that distance learning will grow at a rate of fifteen percent per year. He believes it will primarily be applied at higher levels of education and in lifelong learning programs. In primary and secondary education, human contact is still irreplaceable because it contains an educational component that is indeed difficult to achieve in distance learning.
Lifelong Learning
However, today’s pace of change means that what we learned today may already be outdated tomorrow. This is not helped by high schools or even universities, which often have outdated programs, so, for example, floppy disks are mentioned in technical courses, which are a completely abstract concept for young people, or in journalism, for instance, the model of connected vessels, which one needs to know just to get a passing grade on the exam. While programs are very slowly aligning with the times we live in, educational trends and technology are advancing at a rapid pace, changing, adapting, and progressing year by year. Learning must change, experts say, which is why the acceptance of new technologies and concepts such as lifelong learning is coming to the forefront.
Crnković notes that many trends can certainly be identified, but he cites lifelong learning as one of the two main trends that will characterize the next period.
– The first trend, not only in the coming year but generally in the future, is certainly lifelong education. Although we have witnessed that the labor market has been very dynamic and changeable for years, even decades, this dynamism and changeability are accelerating in the time of the fourth industrial revolution. It is estimated that up to fifty percent of today’s jobs will disappear in the future due to digitalization and automation. With the widespread application of artificial intelligence, that number will certainly be much higher, which necessarily means that new skills will be needed by those just entering the labor market, as well as by everyone already in it, explains Crnković.
Further Education
All those who want to remain competitive in the labor market will have to continuously educate themselves, and this education can be directed towards further specialization in the field where someone has already acquired formal education, but also, given the omnipresence of interdisciplinarity and multidisciplinarity, in entirely new areas.
—
As a consequence of increasingly shorter attention spans and less patience, the trend of microlearning has emerged in recent years
—
– This can be implemented in higher education in two ways: through specialist postgraduate studies lasting a semester or two, or much shorter, e.g., daily, weekly, monthly, more flexible lifelong learning programs that faculties can offer. Higher education institutions have the obligation and opportunity to recognize needs and develop competitive programs. These programs can be developed in collaboration with employers and in accordance with their specific needs. As an example, I would mention the lifelong education program in Human Resource Management in IT that we developed at the Faculty of Economics in Osijek in collaboration with the Osijek Software City association for its management staff, he emphasizes.
The second main trend that the Dean of the Osijek Faculty of Economics mentions is the inclusion of so-called soft skills in education, especially higher education.
According to the latest report ‘Future of Jobs’ by the World Economic Forum, some of the most important skills of the future are creative and analytical thinking, flexibility, motivation, self-awareness, curiosity, empathy, active listening, leadership, and social influence. The Forum clearly predicts that in the future, the market will need self-aware, ambitious, curious, and creative individuals who will seek new opportunities, know how to analyze and solve problems, but also be able to collaborate in teams and demonstrate leadership skills to lead teams. To better prepare students for future careers, educational institutions will need to find ways to enable their students to develop as many soft skills as possible. The development of these skills should be included in all curricula, but also offered in the form of lifelong education.
Frenzied Technological Pace
Technology is taking precedence both in society and in learning and acquiring new knowledge. It is already slowly integrating into the educational system, but in the near future, this will accelerate frantically. The size of the e-learning market exceeded 315 billion dollars in 2021, and it is projected to grow by 20 percent per year from 2022 to 2028. This educational trend has many advantages and disadvantages for teachers and institutions as it forces teachers to change the way they teach. The online nature of these courses can also enhance teachers’ ability to offer adaptations for different learning styles. Advanced students can receive additional learning resources and challenges that will encourage them to delve deeper into the material without interrupting the rest of the class and other students. This way of learning allows for flexibility, but, as we mentioned, it also brings many challenges. One of the technological innovations in learning is gamification, which involves introducing game principles into an environment that is not directly related to games, in this case, learning.
The introduction of artificial intelligence, big data, cloud technology, IoT, mobile learning, and VR has the potential to enrich gamified learning. Research shows that gamification creates dopamine in the brain, making learning more enjoyable and easier. It also increases the chances of practical application of educational concepts as it encourages students to use their imagination to solve problems or complete tasks. Of course, artificial intelligence is also inevitable, as it seeps into all aspects of business life, and in the future, education, which will mean yet another change in the way of learning. Crnković points out that many are not aware that we are already using artificial intelligence every day.
– As the simplest example, I would mention automatic error correction while writing messages on our mobile phones. However, like any other technology, artificial intelligence is further developing and will take on an increasingly significant role in our lives, and thus in education, which will change because of it in the future. One example of its application in education is in analyzing learning habits and results of students. Artificial intelligence, on a group level and especially on an individual level, can identify where additional effort is needed and thus suggest changes in the teaching process to teachers, he explains.
Another trend that has emerged in recent years is microlearning, which is actually a consequence of increasingly shorter student attention spans and patience, which is why students are offered shorter and faster lessons that are said to be very time-efficient. Crnković emphasizes that this is a trend that will certainly continue.
– New technologies affect the ability to maintain the attention of students, which is why teachers face the challenge of how to keep that attention. Therefore, the transfer of knowledge needs to be adapted, and microlearning is one way to do that. Additionally, the content offered must be visually engaging and have an interesting story behind it, explains Crnković.
Change of Roles
With the advancement of educational technology, the declining attention and concentration of the youngest raises the question of what the educational system will look like in the near future. The advancement of technology always brings new possibilities.
—
Creative and analytical thinking, flexibility, motivation, self-awareness, curiosity, empathy, and social influence are some of the most important skills of the future, according to the World Economic Forum
—
– In the educational system, these possibilities manifest in two ways. The first is the universal availability of information, and the second is the development of new tools to support learning to enable students to acquire knowledge and skills in various ways. Given this, the role of the educational system is already changing now, and it will certainly change even more in the future. Students today can independently discover almost unlimited amounts of knowledge with these tools; they no longer need professors and teachers for that. Therefore, their role will change; they will no longer transfer knowledge in the traditional way. They will be some kind of support and moderators who will help students understand how to learn, how to find information, how to use available tools, but, most importantly, how to connect and analyze information and critically evaluate it. The challenge facing the educational system is certainly enormous, concludes Dean Crnković.
