The third generation education

Just at the outset of the Fall 2013 semester at North South University, I was informed of being given the responsibility to teach Production Management to the undergraduates. Overjoyed by the fact that I have been given the opportunity to take a mainstream course which directly relates to my field of specialisation, I set out to develop the course outline and course contents for this subject. This simple process was frequently interrupted by my experiences in studying the on-the-edge topics of this area. Despite the availability of the course outlines designed by other experienced faculties, I was constantly asking myself these questions - "Is there any new approach or innovation in this area?", "Has there been any new tools or strategies developed in this area that my students need to know about?" and "Which of the new topics should cover in this limited span of time while at the same time covering the basics?". I had two textbooks, their latest editions, open in front of me, but was not still assured the appropriate answer to these questions. With these questions in mind, I went to coursera.org, a website where I was enrolled in one course related to Data Analysis. Somehow my pressing curiosity got the better of me, and I searched any course related to production and operations management in the website. Fortunately the search returned a course named "Introduction to Operations Management" which is being taken by Christian Terwiesch of Wharton Business School. So, without hesitation, I enrolled into the course and looked into the video lectures and the materials to see what the famous business school is covering in its curriculum. Finally I was able to finalise the course outline and also develop the roadmap of the topics to teach, which I gathered from not only books, experience and other faculties' guidelines, but also from the online course platform.
 I am using this anecdote from my teaching life to make a simple point - the evolution of education. I prefer today's university education to be the third generation of education. The first generation was the teaching of subjects by the fields 'gurus' with the help of well researched textbooks. Then came the internet, with its incredible silo of information. This helped both the student and the teacher in a classroom, both of whom could always refer to the net for further authenticated information. But I believe we have made further strides in the evolution of education. This is the era of online courses - portals like Coursera, iVersity, Udemy, EDX, Khan Academy (which to some extent falls under this category) and quite a few others. These websites have organised the vast amount of information that is available in the net, into categories and courses, and then they are delivered by very capable teachers of widely recognised universities, ensuring very high quality of delivery and educational experience. These courses not only teach, but some of them have evolved enough to test the knowledge of those who attend the classes and award verified certificates to those who could prove that they have actually learnt the contents. These portals have ushered the age of what I would like to call Education 3.0.
As a university lecturer who is very much into online courses, I have always been confronted by and have also personally wondered how will these online courses by the well-known universities fit in the context of higher education? Will they replace the classroom education? Or will they reinforce the educational experience? Well, I never really believed in the first question. I don't think any online platform will replace the experience that a student has studying in a campus, spending time with university, interacting with the academic minds first hand, and enjoying the overall academic environment of the academia. But these courses are changing the way we should approach university teaching. I believe that just like the board and the marker, the slides and the projector, these courses are also tools which will help us teachers to teach. They can aid in three significant ways.  One of them is illustrated by the experience I shared- using these courses to update the course contents and also look into better ways to teaching complicated topics. I have also used them to educate my students in the basics that they require to do the courses. This is a very useful tactic. When given the task to teach a very broad and challenging subject in 30 hour credit course, it's very useful to ask the students to go through the basic concept topics in a well calibrated online course and then discuss the more complex topics in the class. For the Applied Statistics course that I teach, I refer my students to go to Khan Academy and go through the basic statistics videos, which I believe comprehensively explains the basics of statistics required for a university student. The third, and the most important usage that I found out was that these courses helps us be up to date and more informed about what is being taught globally, and especially in the esteemed institutions in the world. This helps in the improvement of the education quality of any subject in a holistic manner.
Few days back, I was invited to a programme arranged by the Dhaka MOOC (Massive Open Online Courses - the term given to these online courses) Exchange. The event further confirmed the inkling that I had about these online courses ushering the third generation of education. In front of me were people, outliers in their fields, a lot of them being self-educated in topics that I could not fathom (genetic engineering and micro-biology for instance), with the help of online courses. It was an incredible experience. I was also inspired by their mission of using these MOOCs to achieve changes in the quality of education in Bangladesh, and help our youngsters to prosper. The event made me more resolute to write this article, pointing out that in this world, where we are becoming obsolete every hour, traditional university education needs to be updated as well, so that our children do not become obsolete that easily. And that is where precisely MOOCs have a very important role to play, just like the multimedia presentations revolutionising the classroom education. And this is the essence of the next generation of education, or as I have named it here - Education 3.0.

.....................................
Faculty Member, NSU
[email protected]