Why Widely Accessible Tech Education Is Important
In the most recent article, we explained the three components of the Digital Shaper Program that we as TechLabs offer to enable as many ambitious people as possible to acquire state-of-the-art tech skills.
Now, we would like to share four crucial points why we think it is important to offer a widely accessible and efficient way to learn tech skills.
1. Organizations of various kinds struggle to find tech talents.
It is no secret that tech talents are highly sought after on the job market. Today, it is hard to impress anyone with skills in office programs. Rather, coding skills are really in demand.
The LinkedIn emerging jobs report 2018, for instance, notes that the demand for Machine Learning Engineers has increased by 12 times as compared to 5 years ago. An AI expert from a top university earns almost as much as a football player in a top league. And there is no sign that this trend is coming to an end. Rather, it gains further momentum. Closing this skills gap helps companies to stay competitive. Especially in Europe, we really need to get up to speed.
2. The capabilities of technologies need to be leveraged for socially beneficial purposes.
In the public discussion, the positive potential of technologies like AI in sectors such as medicine is often underrepresented. Rather, risks and potential harms dominate the perception, though they are undoubtedly present (e.g. Deep Fakes).
The way we work and for which tasks as humans are responsible in the near future will change substantially by means of automatization and AI. We cannot stop these developments. Rather, we need to actively participate and influence the way we use these powerful technological tools to get positive results as a society. Especially here in Europe, we have too few startups that utilize AI to solve real problems effectively. The USA and especially China are leading the way in AI investments.
Currently, only one out of ten Germans can explain what an algorithm actually is.
Some universities struggle with keeping up with the dynamics and rate of change in the technology landscape. Although AI will be relevant for a wide range of professions, at most computer scientist have extensive exposure to the topic in their academic career. We need to provide broad access to tech education such that citizens are able to understand the inner workings and implications of technological developments — beyond buzzwords. Currently, only one out of ten Germans can actually explain what an algorithm is and only one third knows that algorithms can help for diagnosing diseases. Anyone should be able to form a profound opinion and actively participate in discussions of issues in these contexts.
Which issues of current tech education approaches does the TechLabs Digital Shaper Program address?
3. Online learning does not unfold its full potential in isolation.
Online courses are a scalable solution to give a wide audience the chance to learn tech skills. They offer high flexibility, allow to consider the individual skill level of the learner and give access to the content of the world’s leading universities on platforms like Coursera or edX.
The average completion rate of MOOCs is only at 15%.
On the other hand, an issue with Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) is that learning often takes place in isolation. Therefore, there is a low degree of commitment since a social learning environment is missing and it is harder to integrate interactivity in the learning process. A lot of self-discipline is required. This leads to average completion rates of MOOCs that are as low as 15%.
Also, it is quite hard to integrate forms of collaborative practical project work into online courses that would enable students to develop valuable project management and soft skills. Additionally, a knowledgeable mentor, who is responsible for you personally and knows your individual background, is normally not available to help you in the learning process. The interaction with mentors is mostly limited to online forums, which are often not used extensively. Therefore, we need a project-based and blended learning approach to combine the best of the offline and online world in order to really offer an effective way of learning tech skills.
4. People at the beginning of their tech learning journey need orientation which is the most effective learning path.
If you want to start to learn Data Science, for example, it is quite likely that at first, you are overstrained by the available learning options. Platforms like Udacity, Coursera, Udemy, edX, Lynda all offer relevant Data Science courses. Because tech skills are so in-demand, the e-learning market is flooded with offers. When you are not an expert in the topics in the field of your interest yet, you can neither immediately identify high-qualitative learning material nor create an individualized learning path that takes into account your prior knowledge and personal learning goals directly.
Also, very frequently, the best learning path does not only consider the learning materials from one of the aforementioned platforms but a mix of learning materials from many platforms and, even more significantly, a mix of different formats (videos, blog articles, podcasts, practice material, cheat sheets, etc.). The process of identifying the best materials requires a lot of research and expertise. Hence, we need a way to reduce that complexity and provide guidance to help learners to identify the learning path that is optimal for them personally.
Conclusion
By means of the Digital Shaper Program, we help to contribute to solving the issues outlined in this article.
- We aim to help to close the digital skills gap.
- We put online learning into a context, in which this format is really able to reach its full potential.
- We provide the participants of our program with individualized learning paths to reduce the complexity.
You are more than welcome to apply to participate in our program in the next semester in Münster or Barcelona! New branches will be announced soon. Stay up to date!
