Education is the primary form of learning in one's life; it transforms and reforms a person.
Education before and slightly after technology was very standardised, but in today's time, technology has completely reformed the education system. With the Covid-19 pandemic, technology-driven online learning took over, leading to the popularisation of new research-led learning approaches.
As time goes by, more innovative approaches have come forth with a variety of outlooks towards modern education.
The approaches that stick around become trends. Trends stick around and sometimes shape industries for the future, making it very important to stay up to date with these trends.
Let us look into what the current trends in education are.
But first-
What are Trends in Education?
"Trend" is the word for everyone right now. We share 'trending' memes, look for what's 'trending' on Twitter, and keep track of social trends, fashion trends, economic trends and so forth. But what is a trend exactly?
The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines a trend as an approach towards a line of development.
Therefore trends in education are teaching and learning methodologies that are relevant and beneficial to the people.
Let us now discuss the most popular trends in education that we believe have a scope to grow massively in and beyond the industry.
What are the Top 10 Education Trends for 2023-25?
If we're talking about top trends in education, we simply have to start with online learning. The COVID-19 pandemic turned the education system upside down by putting over 1.2 billion students worldwide out of school. This change made online learning a compulsion and forced edtech companies to come forth to bring positive innovation to the industry. Research and markets have estimated that the online education market will witness a compound annual growth (CAGR) of 9.23% and reach a total market size of 319.167 billion US dollars. Other than that, online courses like Udemy and Coursera have already made a name for themselves, making online education the biggest trend in education to date. Online learning has also made channels like Microsoft teams very popular. Also Apple School Manager ASM is an online platform designed to help educational institutions manage their Apple devices and content. It allows administrators to create and manage Apple IDs for students, teachers, and staff members, as well as to distribute apps and books to their devices
Distance learning is one of several international trends in education that cannot be ignored. Some individuals might initially confuse it with being the same as online learning. These contemporary trends aren't quite the same, though. Each trend has a specialised expert. Unlike online learning, which involves a virtual classroom with both the teacher and the student actively involved, distance learning does not require any direct interaction between the two. And with the rise in AI and ML-based automation, the education system has adopted special tutoring and conversational chatbots to involve and ease the learning process for students of all ages. This demonstrates that no matter where we are, education may be conducted in flexible times, over vast distances.
Big data refers to enormous, hard-to-handle volumes of structured and unstructured data. Universities have used this data to transform their business models resulting in heavily improved academic results of students and in the efficiency of professors. An increase in software-based learning has resulted in the rise of technology solution businesses like Engati, who provide online automation tools to help educators store and monitor data for aspects like response time for exam questions, sources used for self-learning, questions skipped, and questions that have been answered successfully. This has put the focus on more research-based learning and brought overall improvement in the education sector.
Neuroeducation is a discipline that stems from the partnership between neuroscientists and educators. It integrates psychology, neuroscience, cognitive science and education, constructed to enhance curriculum and teaching methods.
Since mainstream education does not account for its inconsistencies as it is not supported by research, neuroeducation works wonders when it comes to learning new skills and concepts. By catering to each individuals learning needs with the use of AI technology or by teaching in small groups helps achieve a personalised learning process for every student. Exploding topics has recorded a 102% increase in the number of searches for neuroeducation worldwide.
It is fairly obvious that there is a limited amount of knowledge that a human being can retain from a single learning session, especially when the topic is not revisited again. Thus the introduction of microlearning. Also known as Nano learning, microlearning is a style of repetition learning where complex topics are broken down into bite-size chunks and repeated over time. According to training industry, microlearning advocates short, spaced bursts of learning that can significantly boost retention. By conducting two to ten-minute learning sessions with multimedia-rich tutorials that focus on providing sizeable information in the shortest time frame, one can produce more results than any long-term format of teaching.
The STEAM in STEAM-based learning stands for Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Math. The inclusion of Arts in the old STEM format brings in a fair amount of creativity in the learning process. The main objective of STEAM-based learning is to help students acquire the abilities they will need to succeed in the future. It is essential that students join college or the industrial labour force with a set of well-rounded abilities that enable them to quickly adjust to a constantly changing and fast-paced environment, regardless of the industry they are interested in.
The US Bureau of Labor Statistics has estimated that between now and 2029, STEAM-related professions will rise by 8% compared to 3.4% compared to non-STEAM-related occupations. It is also suggested that STEAM-related positions will also pay $86,980 per year on average versus $39,810 for all other occupations.
The numbers also suggest that STEAM-based learning is very important and here to last.
In education, AR’s seamless in encouraging engagement and interaction by incorporating digital objects. It enhances students’ ability to spend their time learning curricular subjects while ensuring minimal time is spent on learning how to use new technology.
For a class, an AR setup can be as minimal as an Internet connection, mobile devices, AR apps and “Markers” or “Triggers” (i.e. images, objects, locations and/or actions that trigger an action on the device screen via the AR app). AR may provide students with an opportunity to increase their knowledge in several areas, like reading, working with numbers, and even learning niche-specific skills.
A 2021 EDUCAUSE survey states that nearly 40% of higher education institutes have adopted extended reality at least partly, while 12% are actively using it across various departments. Universities like Colorado State University have already adopted VR technology to teach medical students how to dissect human cadavers. Over 90% of the students confirmed its effectiveness in helping them learn crucial skills like spatial relationships that one requires to master in their field. On the other hand, The University of Michigan has also announced its "XR Initiative", as part of which they plan to partner with Coursera to launch 10 new XR courses to aid learning in 2023. The AR market is also predicted to grow at a CAGR of nearly 28.7% through 2027, according to an analysis by Technavio, making everyone wonder exactly how far this trend will expand across industries.
Immersive and interactive learning is understood to add long-term benefits to the growth of students. For more than 2 decades, the industry has tried to come up with new methods to integrate such long-term learning into the lives of students trying to learn new skills and subjects.
Gamification is an educational approach that incorporates video game design and gaming elements into the teaching process. By adding visual engagement to the mix, gamification ensures that the learner comes to understand and retain information better by associating ideas, words and concepts with images. Therefore gamification has become a big part of different online platforms to help students learn and retain information better with the assistance of technology.
Some of the most notable examples of the use of gamification on learning applications and platforms are Duolingo, Elevate and Khan Academy.
With people's preferences shifting to online learning, new platforms have started emerging in the online education space. Platforms like masterclass have given an innovative approach to the online teaching spear by introducing courses taught by celebrity practitioners instead of professional educators. In doing so, the platforms provide users with access to learn from the best in the field, gaining an edge over top players in the industry like Udemy and Coursera.
The platform Masterclass has profited incredibly by investing in this uncustomary approach and has raised 225 million dollars on a 2.75 billion dollar valuation. With such results, we expect to see more education platforms picking up this trend of teaching in the coming years.
Learning platforms like Udemy, Coursera and Masterclass are very helpful but they still lack when it comes to providing advanced courses that professionals in technical fields can leverage to advance their careers.
This is where niche platforms start to come in. Niche platforms offer in-depth, advanced training that is not widely available anywhere else. Examples of niche education platforms would be Hack The Box, an online school that provides training solutions for cybersecurity students and professionals and Cybrary, a platform for the IT industry that designs courses that IT professionals need in order to receive essential certifications.
Since most niche education platforms are from the technical sector, their popularity is directly proportional to the growth in the developments in technology. Therefore the current growth in artificial intelligence and machine learning technology indicates a bigger rise in this educational trend in the near future.
These were the 10 most popular trends in education, which we expect to linger and grow over the next few years. The education industry has been witnessing a great change in its traditional approaches, and we couldn't be less excited to witness the ripple effect of these emerging education trends on the future of other industries and the world in itself.
The role of Automation.
Growth in technology and automation are key factors and the foundation for the rise of these trends in education. Automation has made developing and upgrading online learning platforms much easier and accessible for all.
With auto pay and business solution companies on the rise, every industry has relevant access to low code automation, which has truly allowed creators to get innovative in their ways. The education industry is no exception to this. In fact, the industry has profited the most from automation solutions compared to others.
What do you think about these trends?
Is there anything that we missed out on?
Do let us know.
Till then, here is an article on “Can education chatbots replace teachers?” for your better reference!