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STUDENTS IN WONDERLAND!
STUDENTS WILL BE LEARNING SUBJECTS OF THEIR CHOOSING, USING VARIOUS TECHNOLOGIES, AND WORKING WITH TEACHERS OF THEIR CHOICE. WHAT EXACTLY ARE WE TALKING ABOUT? NO LESS THAN THE FUTURE OF EDUCATION AND A WONDERLAND OF LEARNING!
Phil Redhead, an independent education consultant based in Dubai and the Director of Education and Innovation at Kinteract, a UKbased edtech company committed to providing hyper-personalised learning for all, takes us further down the rabbit hole, explaining: “The use of technology will aid the teaching and learning process. Learning will become more creative and practical as time goes on. Students’ criticalthinking, problem-solving abilities and soft skills will be evaluated, and their performance in real world, creative projects of their own choosing.”
Schools will become exploratory places that are designed for each individual student to learn and develop. “Good teachers will still be crucial, but they’ll serve as facilitators, not content providers,” Phil says, who is himself a qualified teacher and school leader, with over 20 years experience in global education. “Artificial intelligence, machine learning, and real-world teaching and learning experiences will gradually transform education.”
HYPER-PERSONALISED LEARNING
The most significant benefits of this transformation will come in the form of a hyper-personalised education that is delivered in a customised manner. But what exactly is hyper-personalised learning?
“Maslow called it self-actualization or being all one can be,” Phil says. “Csikszentmihalyi created the concept of ‘flow’ and Sir Ken Robinson framed it as ‘being in our element’. The Japanese talk about finding one’s ‘ikigai’ or purpose in life. At Kinteract, we believe that education is about far more than just the traditional basics. That’s why, as well as accelerating progress and raising achievement in the core school curriculum, our solution goes further, in supporting holistic, personalised learning and development in any field and for all ages.
“There is no way that every learner can be served by high-quality teachers in a face to face model, within a brick and mortar institution, no matter how ‘state-of-the-art’ the facilities or well-planned the curriculum.
“John Dewey, American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer, saw the child as the curriculum and, when we internalise this as the reality and imagine how technology can help deliver this hyper-personalised experience of lifelong learning, we are moving towards a better world.
“So this is what we are working on - building a better, fairer world by levelling up society and helping everyone to achieve their dreams and find their purpose in life.
EDUCATION DRIVEN BY SOCIAL CHANGE
Technology will shape the future of education, but social change and improved energy infrastructure will drive it.
Education remains an inaccessible birthright for millions of children around the world, with 260 million youngsters out of school in 2020. Millions more are in classrooms but don’t get a quality education. According to a UNDESA study, 188 million children still attend schools without electricity. That means no lights or fans, no heat or comfort, no internet, no computers or digital learning aids, and low staff and student retention.
“To reach vulnerable socioeconomic groups, the future of education lies in a mix of stable energy availability and adapted educational tools,” Phil explains.
“To be even more aspirational, if you get this right long term, you more or less empty the prisons; you create a safe, fair, equal society where everyone is happy and fulfilled. You’ll always get some crime, but for the most part, if everyone has a purpose and a reason to succeed, and are given the skills and values to achieve their goals, they will contribute to society.”
AI AND THE METAVERSE
The metaverse makes use of the Substrate modular framework for increased scalability, long-term expansion, and support to connect decentralised applications, services, and other independent blockchains to connect, exchange information, and transactions at a lower cost. At least that’s how a ‘techie’ would explain it. However, there is another explanation, which is far more exciting: ‘Entering Wonderland (the metaverse) will inspire and enthral; each person’s interpretation of Wonderland is unique, but all convey the sense that anything is possible.’
Phil takes up the story: “In the metaverse, students will be able to create a ‘digital twin’, and within a few seconds see where they might be in a few years time if they follow a particular path. And that path need not be a lawyer, doctor or civil engineer; it can be a musician, artist, sportsperson, or any one of a million possibilities that are out there.
“The metaverse will become more influential very quickly, too. Today, all the kids want to be on YouTube, but I don’t think they will in five or ten years; they’ll all be in the metaverse. The learner will be put at the centre of everything.”
Virtual Reality (VR) will allow people, instead of using a computer, to enter the metaverse, possibly using a headset to enter a virtual world connecting all sorts of digital environments. Unlike existing VR, which is mostly utilised for gaming, this virtual environment might be used for anything - work, education, concerts, or simply hanging out.
“There will be smart recommendations for every learner – not just the next maths question in an adaptive programme, but a Participatory Learning and Action (PLA) that leverages rich data to connect the learner with content, teachers, peers, institutions, courses, causes, projects, internships, mentors, funding, and everything else they need to succeed,” Phil explains.
Most people imagine that when you use the metaverse, you’ll have a 3D avatar - a version of yourself. But it’s early days, so there’s no single agreed definition just yet. What we can say, though, is that the metaverse will be interactive, immersive, and collaborative.
“Blockchain and NFTs are driving this new age of creativity. A trend that started with the ability to create one’s own space on the web (e.g. MySpace) and is now booming in YouTube, TikTok, etc., is about to explode with the advent of NFTs and the metaverse, providing the ability to monetise one’s own creations and influence others to a whole new level.”
THE TRUE PROMISE OF EDTECH
The metaverse can be conceived of as a collection of worlds, similar to how the physical universe is made up of worlds, and it will allow education to become hyper-personalised, or as Lewis Carroll wrote in Alice in Wonderland, ‘Which way you ought to go depends on where you want to get to ...’
Nevertheless, many people are concerned that as technology rapidly changes the environment around us, it will supplant human input. Technology, though, is not a replacement for good teaching. Instead, it gives the finest educators the tools they need to engage students in learning, enhancing and expanding on what the best teachers are already good at: explaining, illustrating, involving and guiding, supporting and inspiring students.
“There is a growing realisation that traditional institutions and models of education cannot alone provide the knowledge, skills, attributes and values that students need for a life of hyper-personalised learning. This shift to the democratisation of learning through the application of exponential technologies to new models and modalities of education provision that place the learner at the centre is the true promise of edtech.
KINTERACT
+356 7909 6898 sales@kinteract.com facebook @kinteractapp twitter @wearekinteract linkedin @kinteract youtube @Kinteract
www.kinteract.co.uk
CARFAX EDUCATION
COMPLETES SEED ROUND AT $10 MILLION VALUATION TO BUILD GLOBAL ONLINE LEARNING PLATFORM
CARFAX EDUCATION, THE UAE BASED GLOBAL EDUCATION GROUP, HAS RAISED $1 MILLION IN INITIAL FUNDING TO BUILD THE WORLD’S FIRST BLOCKCHAIN POWERED ONLINE EDUCATION PLATFORM, CARFAX COLLEGE ONLINE. BACKED BY WELTHEE, A DECENTRALISED INVESTMENT FUND, THE INVESTMENT WILL ENABLE CARFAX TO FURTHER DEVELOP THE PLATFORM FOR LAUNCH IN JANUARY 2022.
With a uniquely flexible model, Carfax College Online will combine self-led learning with one-to-one tuition to make world-class education more accessible to a wider range of students internationally.
Tudor Oros, Managing Director, Carfax Education, said: “We’re delighted to be partnering with Welthee to bring Carfax College Online into fruition. Since the pandemic, we’ve seen a huge rise in demand for our homeschooling services as parents have seen the advantage of a more flexible approach to education and the benefits of self-led learning.
INITIAL STAGE FUNDING RAISED $1 MILLION INVESTMENT LED BY WELTHEE
COURSERA
TRANSFORMING LIVES THROUGH LEARNING
ANTHONY TATTERSALL IS THE EMEA VICE-PRESIDENT OF ENTERPRISE AT COURSERA, A COMPANY THAT PARTNERS WITH OVER 200 LEADING UNIVERSITIES AND FIRMS TO DELIVER FLEXIBLE, AFFORDABLE, JOB-RELEVANT ONLINE LEARNING TO INDIVIDUALS AND ORGANISATIONS WORLDWIDE. WE SPOKE TO ANTHONY TO FIND OUT MORE ABOUT COURSERA; ITS PHILOSOPHY, COURSES, AND VISION FOR THE FUTURE.
THE NUMBER OF UNIVERSITY DEGREES OFFERED ON COURSERA HAS RISEN 55% YEAR ON YEAR
Education UAE: Can you talk a little about Coursera, its background, and its educational philosophy?
Anthony Tattersall: Coursera aims to create an ecosystem where anyone, anywhere in the world, can transform their life through learning. Launched in 2012 by two Stanford Computer Science professors - Andrew Ng and Daphne Koller - we are now one of the largest online learning platforms in the world, with 92 million registered learners as of September 30th, 2021. Coursera has a three-sided platform that connects learners, educators, and institutions in a global learning ecosystem. We partner with over 250 leading university and industry partners to offer a broad catalogue of content and credentials, including guided projects, courses, specialisations, certificates, and bachelor’s and master’s degrees.
EDUAE: The company offers a very broad portfolio of courses – what are its target markets and in which territories?
AT: Coursera is a global company with a global mission. Of our 92 million learners worldwide, more than 5 million live in the Middle East, including 412,000 new enrolments in the past quarter alone. We have seen over 550,000 of the UAE’s learners begin a learning journey on Coursera.
We strive to reach learners, wherever they may be, through world-class online content, mobile, and hands-on learning experiences that can be tailored to their unique, individual needs. In the Middle East, we recently launched our right to left functionality for Arabic learners, and learners can now access an additional 2,000 courses on Coursera in Arabic. These include world-class courses from leading universities and industry leaders, including Programming for Everybody (Getting Started with Python) by the University of Michigan, English for Career Development by the University of Pennsylvania, and Introduction to Machine Learning by Duke University.
EDUAE: Can you explain right-to-left functionality?
AT: Some estimates put today’s Arabic speakers at over 274 million. By displaying Arabic onscreen text from right-to-left, as is consistent with the written structure of the language, we allow Arabic enterprise learners on the platform to easily navigate Coursera, from our homepage, through our search and browse facilities, to enrolment, assessment, grading, notes, transcripts, and emails. Coursera’s Arabic learner experience will be transformed with this new feature.
EDUAE: There is a tremendous acceleration in online courses in the UAE, and in the medium to long term, this must be very positive for the nation’s economy?
AT: The growth in online course enrolments in the UAE is enabling the country to upskill at scale. This will enable the country to consolidate its status as the regional leader for Business skills, for which it is rated ‘Cutting Edge’, with 99% proficiency, in the most recent Coursera Global Skills Report. This strength is built on the high uptake of courses like English for Career Development (4th-most-popular in the UAE), Successful Negotiation: Essential Strategies and Skills (6th-most-popular), and Financial Markets (7th).
The Coursera Global Skills Report also finds that the UAE’s citizens are less proficient in technology skills (33% proficiency, rated ‘Emerging’) and data science skills (34% proficiency, rated ‘Emerging’).
However, we are also seeing tens of thousands of learners across the country seek to upskill themselves in these domains. Also among the top ten courses in the UAE are Machine Learning (5th), Excel Skills for Business: Essentials (8th), and Programming for Everybody (Getting Started with Python) (9th). Increased uptake of these courses will help to enhance the country’s skills profile and increase its economic competitiveness.
EDUAE: I understand you now offer over 2000 courses in Arabic; this seems quite a unique online offering in the educational landscape?
AT: Our Arabic-language offerings are essential to our expansion in the region, which has also seen us add four new Saudi Arabian partners in the last year to help meet learner demand. In total, we now offer 2,013 courses in Arabic, 413 of which are unique to the region. The remaining 1,600 are translations from the most popular courses we’re seeing on the platform, in other languages. In addition, we also offer subtitles for approximately 95% of all Arabic courses on the platform.
Among our top-rated translated courses are IBM’s ‘Python for Data Science, AI & Development’, and Stanford University’s ‘Machine Learning’, as well as Imperial College London’s ‘Science Matters: Let’s Talk About Covid-19’.
EDUAE: How cost-effective are your degree courses – I understand you offer tremendous value for 100% online courses from leading universities?
AT: Affordability is at the heart of our mission - many degrees on Coursera cost less than half of comparable on-campus programmes. We’ve been able to lower the cost of these programmes by making open courses a gateway to degrees. The large learner funnel created by these open courses (we have a global audience of more than 92 million learners) results in a very low customer acquisition cost for degrees. Universities are then able to pass those savings on to students.
Recently, Coursera also announced a new tiered structure that offers universities one of the lowest service fees in the industry for online degree programmes: service fees progressively reduce from 40% to 25% of total tuition as universities grow their programmes. As of the end of June, 81% more students were enrolled in Coursera’s online degree programmes than the year before.
Additional value is created by product innovations that enhance the student experience. These innovations include technology like video office hours and live sessions with professors, Slack integration to foster communication among classmates, remote-proctored exams, and coursework that can be completed via web or mobile app to ensure a flexible yet high-quality, interactive experience.
EDUAE: Which major companies and organisations use your services, and do you see this area of the business continuing to expand?
AT: Coursera currently works with more than 175 universities and 75 industry partners worldwide. The demand for technology skills is rising and some of the fastest paths to obtain job-relevant knowledge in this field are through courses offered by technology companies. Giants such as IBM, Google, and Facebook are empowering people around the world to learn in-demand skills quickly through courses on Coursera.
We expect this list to expand steadily as more organisations discover the value of our platform and our approach. We also have many customers in the Middle East - organisations that use Coursera services to upskill students, employees, and citizens. Our regional partners include the Abu Dhabi School of Government, L’Université Hassan II de Casablanca, University of Jeddah, and Effat University.
EDUAE: Many people believe that Covid-19 can be a catalyst for change in education – how does Coursera view this?
AT: Covid-19 has already catalyzed change in education - it has catalyzed increased demand for, and uptake of, blended learning; and high levels of institutional collaboration with partners like Coursera to meet that demand: 47% of universities collaborated with other institutions to better serve students during Covid-19.
Coursera saw a rapid increase in learner numbers and learning activity across its platform in the wake of the pandemic. In 2020, we gained 30 million new learners, 75 million new enrollments, and Coursera learners completed 576 million lectures and 123 million assessments. As campuses closed and the employment market transformed in the wake of Covid-19, the world responded with a rising need for flexible, accessible online learning.
This need remains high. Technology has enabled learners to access high-quality education from anywhere in the world, and Covid-19 forced universities to adopt online and blended learning to a greater extent than ever before. A recent TopHat study suggests that 75% of students want continued access to video lectures, while nearly 60% of institutions are re-evaluating their online learning priorities.
Covid-19 was a turning point for higher education. More than 30 million new learners registered on Coursera globally in 2020 alone, representing a 65% year-on-year growth. This forced adoption of online learning will lead to an enduring digital transformation of higher education and will be defined by blended classrooms, job-relevant education, and lifelong learning at work.
EDUAE: What is Coursera’s vision for the next five years?
AT: Over the next five years, the disruption caused by automation and the pandemic will continue to drive change across the world. For educational providers, the number of competitive alternatives will continue to increase, while learner adoption of more accessible, flexible alternatives will also rise. For providers to continue meeting learner needs at scale, institutional collaboration and partnerships will be critical. Institutions that take advantage of these collaborative opportunities will help drive change and mitigate the social inequities worsened by the pandemic.
Technology will also continue to facilitate the rise of remote work, helping provide anyone, anywhere access to high-quality jobs, even if those jobs are not in their city, state, or even their country.
Coursera will continue to act as a partner to learners, enterprises, and institutions as they align efforts to help drive a more inclusive and equitable recovery.
COURSERA facebook @Coursera twitter @coursera linkedin @coursera youtube @coursera
THE EDUCATION SECTOR
THE SCHOOLS OF THE FUTURE ARE BEING BUILT RIGHT NOW. THESE ARE SCHOOLS WHERE ALL TEACHERS HAVE THE NECESSARY QUALIFICATIONS AND MOTIVATION, WHERE TECHNOLOGY ENABLES THEM TO PROVIDE HIGH-QUALITY INSTRUCTION, AND WHERE ALL STUDENTS LEARN CORE SKILLS, SUCH AS SOCIO-EMOTIONAL AND DIGITAL ABILITIES.
Unfortunately, though, the education system still faces numerous challenges. Due to the importance of an identification card in universities, for instance, many people create a false identity to gain access. Furthermore, students frequently alter certificates to suit their requirements, resulting in a high level of dishonesty throughout the system.
Unwieldy registration and management processes are another problem, with the increasing amount of time spent on these resulting in less time for teaching students. Then there is the subject of attendance. Because there is no efficient means to track them, some students, particularly in universities, develop a habit of being absent, taking advantage of the fact that it is next to impossible to track everyone on campus. The list is long. But the world has moved into a new era. There are so many changes in society, many of them marked by technology, and as a result, education must change with them. Yet, how is this to be achieved?
Unifinity Integrated Solutions is part of the answer, with a fully decentralised application designed to assist educators to implement blockchain technology in their schools. The company has already dramatically improved different systems in a variety of industries across the world, and now Unifinity has introduced this revolutionary technology to help improve the education system under the banner of Unifinity Institutes.
BLOCKCHAIN
Blockchain is, of course, still a little esoteric to many people. So what is it? Put simply, a blockchain is a continuously expanding list of records known as blocks that are linked together via cryptography. A cryptographic hash of the preceding block, a time stamp, and exchange information are all included in each block. Information can safely be stored over a shared system using blockchain, where everybody can see it but no one can change it. Blockchain keeps track of all information transactions in a ledger and employs a distributed method to verify each transaction. The blockchain is used to securely exchange items such as money, contracts, and now education without the need for a third-party middleman. It is extremely difficult to modify information after it has been stored on a blockchain.
Unlike a banking system, for instance, where no client has access to another client’s transactions, blockchain technology allows all clients across the world to see another client’s transactions. As a result, everything is completely transparent, ensuring that no customer can edit or delete any information without another client seeing it.
Importantly, because blockchain represents digitised truth, it may be used in any digital process where parties must trust one another.
Unifinity is a dynamic interface that provides the necessary infrastructure and a set of integrated tools to connect all blockchain innovation partners and activities. It will enable institutions to handle blockchain features and applications at a fraction of the present cost and time, ushering in a paradigm shift in the educational sector.
BUILDING A COMMUNITY BY SERVING EVERYONE There are many intriguing features on the Unifinity platform, including:
A reward system for students, to incentivise their performance A reliable system for school management and students admission An efficient payment gateway and investment system An attendance monitoring system Certificate issuance and identity verification system A virtual bank for the users
Unifinity’s features will help to tackle the difficulties of the educational system in a number of innovative ways. By utilising enhanced technology to execute complex operations, it assures that less time is spent in the admission of new students and minimises the stress associated with overseeing the entire
management activity. This guarantees that more time is spent with students, providing them with the high-quality education they deserve.
Unifinity also provides a mechanism for schools to verify students’ identities and authenticate and give validated certificates to students, thereby reducing the number of fraudulent entries and certificate fraud occurring today.
Moreover, Unifinity has created a one-stop application from which anyone can perform any activity on the system, making it accessible to all users, including parents and students. This means that parents can track the performance of their children and even pay school fees and other dues, quickly and easily.
This is just the tip of the iceberg, though.
STUDENTS CAN PAY FOR THEIR OWN EDUCATION
Unifinity opens up entirely new possibilities for educational institutions, their staff, faculty, and students. Students, for instance, can be rewarded for a variety of accomplishments, including merely showing up to class, taking examinations and quizzes, and using the Unifinity platform. The goal is to make studying genuinely enjoyable for students while also assisting the school or university in providing incentives based on students’ classroom performance by tokenizing their grades and rewarding them for their achievements. Through this rewards system – known as the Unifinity Performance-Based Distribution Platform – students will also have the opportunity to fund their own education! Schools and universities will be able to release tranches of funding to individual students or educational institutions when certain conditions are met, thanks to the support of donors, sponsors, PTA organisations, NGOs, scholarships, and other sources. Students can be awarded for attending lessons, learning new skills, acing tests, participating in extracurricular activities, or maintaining a high-grade average.
A WATERSHED EVENT
The essential question is: to what extent are our current classroom, people, time, and technology aiding or impeding our vision? Will upgrading and fine-tuning the current system, which is the conceptual equivalent of rearranging a house’s windows and doors, help us reach our objectives? Or is it necessary to take a completely new approach to the organisation of people, spaces, time, and technology in education?
Future planning involves both vision and rigour. We cannot afford to be caught off guard again in a future when shocks such as pandemics and extreme weather events are projected to become increasingly common. Educational systems must evolve away from the ideals that defined education in previous generations if they are to address the challenges of the 21st century.
The Unifinity platform is about to lead a dramatic shift in the worldwide education sector. It is, without a doubt, a watershed event in the educational system and the blockchain sector, and it will help to secure the planet’s future by cultivating youngsters who are well-positioned to be future leaders.
UNIFINITY
+356 7909 6898 support@unifinity.eu facebook @Unifinityph linkedin @unifinity twitter @unifinity_io youtube @unifinity ioa
