Online Learning to Provide Better Quality of Education across the Globe

LINC 2019 at MIT

The main focus of the LINC conference 2019 was on new ways to provide the highest quality of education to students around the globe seeking expertise in different domains of education. With time, learning has changed and now, it is not confined to classrooms due to the explosion of internet tools; online learning has brought new dimensions to education. The opportunities are enormous, but challenges are not less. Around the world, young children do not have access to quality education. As pointed out by the Brooking Institution, there is a huge gap in the educational system of a developed nation and developing nations. It might take a hundred years with a considerable amount of time for the educational system to reform and fill this gap. Rebecca Winthrop, Director of Center for Universal Education (CUE) and senior fellow for global economy and development at the Brookings Institution said, “We need to shift to skills that will prepare students for the future.” Further, she adds, “Students need a broad set of competencies, as well as social and emotional skills.” Her major concern was without any concrete policy reform in education around the world, will have 884 million kids without basic secondary-level skills.

Time to LeapFrog Old System

Winthrop also discussed the likely scenarios where leapfrogging can be used for a better outcome. The traditional education system is based on a linear approach. Leapfrogging approach to education focuses mostly on “rapid, non-linear progress.” It is more inclined towards the individual preference of learning. She also presented various cases of leapfrogging; one such approach was adopted in Brazil, where satellite education programs train teachers. This helps to improve the quality of teaching that gets disseminate towards the students. Her main focus was on structural design and cost implication per student and this new approach is going to have it. “You need to know what is the essence of why the thing is successful and you need to make sure that core element is preserved when moving to another context or scale,” says Winthrop.

Providing Higher Education to Refugees

MIT has introduced a new system called the Refugee Action Hub Certificate Program (ReACT), which allows refugees to get higher education while interacting and connecting back to the global community. The Uruguay Technological University (UTEC) and CoLAB provide blended learning programs in data science for 500 students for the next four years. J-Wel is responsible for online courses and MIT and International Science and Technology (MISTI) will deal with the on-campus curriculum. LINC 2019 brought forward some out of the box and strong ideas which can change the way we learn in the future, but it requires old systems to adapt to the new innovative technologies, that is available in the field of education.