Lifelong Learning vs. EdTech
Why we’re looking in the wrong places to design for the learners of the future.
What is the future of work? Governments, trade unions and think tanks across the world are grappling with this question. One thing they all agree on is that the future of work involves responding to constant and rapid change.
To keep up with these demands, our aging population will have to train and retrain, learning throughout their lives to keep pace with innovation. ‘Lifelong learning’ can no longer be treated as a nice to have aspiration for the middle classes; it is an economic necessity for all.
Tackling this challenge at scale requires a radical redesign of systemic learning to tackle issues of both supply and demand.
Supply: lifelong learning means delivering learning solutions at a vastly greater scale than ever before. If everyone has to keep learning, there have to be learning options for everyone. There is very little infrastructure to build on, as the adult education sector has been largely dismantled since 2010. Even our existing school structure struggles to meet demands of just 8.6 million pupils.
Demand: children who rely on their parent for food and shelter can be made to attend school. Adults must want to. We know that the people most likely to participate in adult education are those who have already enjoyed educational success at school or university. At least one third of people did not have this experience. How can we design a learning culture that includes them?
I look at these challenges and think two things:
1) Technology must be a major part of the solution
2) Education technology as we know it, is not the answer.
Technology must be part of the solution because of scale. Almost everyone has access to a smart phone. Not everyone has access to a college. Not everyone can afford a course. Not everyone can keep to a timetable. Also, and this is important, people expect to be able learn digitally.
Let’s tackle point two.
A lot is written about the ‘promise’ of education technology for lifelong learning. But to the VC funds the sector is built on, the promise of EdTech is a large slice of the $5 trillion spent each year on education. They invest products that are inherently informed by current school and further education provision, aiming to either augment, replace or disintermediate the existing supply. The edtech sector is vastly dominated by learning management systems, K12 digital content providers and MOOCs.
MOOCs are designed to create digital versions of the existing university experience — not to solve lifelong learning. A digital version of the school or university experience will only appeal to people who enjoyed school or university. The people who need access to adult learning the most do not want your computer science degree.
If we want to design for self-directed learning, we need to understand self-directed learners, not just academic practice. To engage the widest possible audience of lifelong learners we must investigate the trends and expectations set by the digital learning that people are already accessing every day.
Over the last five years, across many different projects, I have spoken to hundreds of young people about how they use digital technology to learn, both in terms of supporting school study (in a word, YouTube), and most interestingly, for recreational learning; the stuff they care enough about to learn outside the education system.
I’ve spoken to young people learning cyber security, video editing, music production, musical instruments, distance running, meditation, creative writing, knitting, English as a foreign language and more.
There are clear patterns to the way that these groups approach digital learning. Here are 5 examples:
1) Learning is driven by output, not accreditation:
I’ve yet to meet a hacker, cook or musician who started out with the aim to learn a subject. They started with a question: e.g. cheat codes for DOTA 2?, quick ways to cook chicken?, chords for Wolf Alice songs?, training plan for 10k?. Everything starts with a search. No one goes beyond page 1 of google. Yet.
2) Learning is project-focused and a-synchronous:
The project-based nature of recreational learning means that learners often focus on developing their skills intensely over a short period of time, then put down that interest for long periods (possibly several months), before building their skills with another project. The projects get closer together and more frequent as interest and ability build over time.
3) Learners are platform neutral and use a variety of media:
Youtube is often a first stop for recreational learners, particularly for step-by-step instructionals. Over the last year I have seen a large increase in the use of podcasts to support personal development. Sometimes users will download an app, but (for young users in particular) an app has to earn its keep. If it’s not being used every day, it gets forgotten, then deleted. Apps are more frequently used for tracking progress than as a primary information source. For the beginner, search is the platform — as interest and confidence progress, Google gets replaced by an expert community.
4) Learners seek out expert communities to learn from:
Recreational learners find communities of practice through social media (e.g. Facebook groups, Twitter lists, Sub-Reddits) and occasionally through subject-specific platforms (e.g. Stackoverflow, Myfitnesspal), to learn from. Places where you can ask questions when things are going wrong and share frustrations and victories are very important for digital learning. It’s often through these communities that learners identify new sources of information, good tools, best practice and future projects.
5) Learners want to share their work with friends and peers:
With no formal accreditation, recreational learners look for feedback and approbation from online communities. Whether its cooking, knitting, game-mods or a 10k medal pic — people want to share pictures and evidence of their work. Often they will share on Instagram or other social networks first, to get recognition of their efforts from friends. If the learner is planning to improve in future projects, they may share with their expert community and ask for constructive feedback. This feedback loop is essential for a learning community to be successful. Communities that don’t feedback on posts don’t survive.
This is far from an exhaustive list, just examples of trends worth exploring. How learners want and expect to learn through digital technology is at least as important to questions of lifelong learning as efficacy of practice.
While much of EdTech seeks to optimise or replace formal teaching environments, informal learning through digital platforms is already creating new expectations from learners. If we can understand what makes recreational digital learning experiences successful, perhaps we can use that knowledge to help design learning services that people want to take part in; Learning that is accessible, and hopefully pleasurable, for everyone.
