How Schools Should Use Big Data and Digital Learning to Add Value?

★ “Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school” – Albert Einstein ★

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If Einstein is right, traditional school education is not adding much value to students. A 16-year-old student criticises school education on Medium for everyone’s “just memorise it and get an A” attitude. Elon Musk said that the problem with education is that teachers do not explain to students why they are learning a subject.

Information is highly accessible in the digital age. It doesn’t make sense to test students how much they remember from textbooks. I believe that the purpose of education is to help us get the most out of life, rather than to simply inject knowledge in us. We need to acquire life skills to learn, evaluate and adapt in life. Therefore, education should be a means to optimise our feedback loop for self-improvement.

School education should be able to:

• Grow curiosity in students

• Give them the motivation to learn

• Train their critical thinking

Adam Bryant identified curiosity as a common trait of successful CEOs, showing that curiosity could be a key to success in business. It also allows us to discover our meaning of life. Moreover, schools should give students the motivation to learn as learning is a major part of the feedback loop. Therefore, it should be fun and engaging. Finally, students should be taught to think critically and learn actively by giving their own opinion. Critical thinking enables evaluation and adaptation in life. Here are three technologies that will bring out the value of education when used appropriately.

★  “The smart use of technology doesn’t replace faculty – it redeploys them” – Bill Gates   ★

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1)Digital learning
The ed-tech industry has created numerous online learning opportunities, such as massive open online courses (MOOCs) on Coursera with videos and interactive tools. MOOCs will ensure accessibility of education, giving students the motivation to learn. However, I believe that a formal education environment is essential for fostering students’ social skills – learning to deal with conflicts and make friends. Therefore, online education is a great supplement to formal education, but it must not become a substitute.

We also need real-life challenges in education because we forget things that are irrelevant to us. Over 100 teams of students signed up for the SpaceX Hyperloop Pod competition. Through designing and building prototype pods, they reinforced knowledge whilst contributing to creating the potential “next big thing”. Using data, online platforms can enable such decentralised learning opportunities by connecting companies with students to work on challenging and meaningful projects, sparking their motivation to learn.

2)Big Data
More data will be collected from online learning activities, enhancing learning efficiency by suggesting ways for students to improve. However, with big data, it is tempting to personalise education – i.e. a student should learn at a certain pace or will most likely succeed in a certain subject. The danger is that personalised learning will determine what we learn, taking away our freedom to learn and to try different subjects. We will lose curiosity in things that are not efficient to learn.

Big data can give guidance to specific subjects that we should learn, but the wide range of subjects in traditional education is still important for protecting our freedom to learn. Instead of focusing on the efficiency of gaining knowledge, schools should focus on giving students feedback on how to improve critical thinking. The data should answer questions such as “What biases are affecting my judgements?” and “What is hindering my creativity?” This will strengthen students’ critical thinking and allow students to “learn to improve”.

3)Virtual/Mixed/Augmented Reality

Multisensory learning will enhance the learning experience and result. However, the biggest benefit of VR is that education will become more engaging, growing students’ curiosity and giving them the motivation to learn and ask questions. Imagine putting on your VR headset and going to a naval battle with Lord Nelson in History lesson, how cool!

MR and AR might not provide an exciting immersion as VR does, but it makes learning a lot more practical and relevant. Soon, students will be wearing AI-enabled smart glasses in lessons with relevant information and graphics overlaying what they see. This instant feed of new information will provoke further thoughts, raising the students’ inquisitiveness. This will train the students’ brains to constantly evaluate information, which is an important process in the feedback loop.
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Conclusion
In the 21st century, we need life education. We want the next generation to know how to live a happy life, how to find what they love and how to deal with failures. Technologies, such as those I mentioned above, will give us new ways to achieve this. We need the right mix of traditional and digital education with the aim to transform education to a means to help students develop life skills. Qualities, such as critical thinking and curiosity, rather than knowledge alone, are what make students successful in life.