THE FUTURE OF EDUCATION ?
From Web2 to ED3
“Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.” — Nelson Mandela
Web 3 and Education are merging, creating unsuspected levers in competence acquisition, workforce efficiency and flexibility. Hopes of a revolution in the Education sphere are blossoming. Can the Metaverse also disrupt conventional teaching ?
And if so, how far away are we from this potential new chapter in the History of dissemination of knowledge?
>> Fast forward in 2025…(not a too distant future)
It’s 11.50 am and you’re about to share a delicious meal with the family…
Today, something is different. Your young daughter seems transported by the lesson she just had.
“Mon, Dad…I want to be an archeologist!”.
Where does this sudden vocation comes from? And why does she sound so determined?
She just experienced the future of learning…in the Metaverse, a trend that is reshaping Education as we know it today. Her exploration of the Egyptian Pyramids was so immersive and the content so well distilled that she can’t wait to develop her own investigations…on the field
Talking about pyramid, a famous — yet controversial — model developed by the National Training Laboratories Institute (NTL) evaluated that active learning through discussion, actual practice and teaching to others is the best way for knowledge to “stick”.
Immersion undeniably brings superior value to the learning process…. Once you gamify this learning experience; you create avid and enthusiast learners…what your teachers and professors never achieved!
<< Now back to 2022, where do we exactly stand with
Our Current Educational Model?
US News, in partnership with BAV Group and the Wharton School of Pennsylvania published the 2021 best countries for Education report. At the top of list : The United States of America, The United Kingdom, Germany, Canada and France
Nothing really surprising with these usual suspects, until you take a closer look at the structural issues affecting the educational systems in the leading countries.
· The $1.7 trillion crisis in the US acutely raises the question of affordability
CNBC, based on data by the US Department of Education reported that education debt are on average paid off after 17 years!!
· Quality is being questioned in France
Le Monde highlighted that France actually ranks in middle position within the EU. Quality has been consistently deteriorating throughout the last 15 years with students exhibiting increasing difficulties to master written French in particular.
· Geographic, gender and social-background disparities remain a conundrum in The United-Kingdom, even though the country puts a strong emphasis on Education
The bottom of this ranking is disturbing…
· 5 African countries are closing the march: Niger (28.7%) , Burkina Faso (28.7%) , Mali (31.1%) , Central African Republic (56%), Ethiopia (39%)(with the estimated literacy rates in brackets)
The global situation is critical and exacerbated by shifts in demographics
· the global population is getting older (people over the age of 65 are projected to outnumber the 15–24 group by 2050)
· and very soon, at least 50 % of the global population growth will come from India, Nigeria, Pakistan, the DRC, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Indonesia, Egypt and the United Sates of America as per this United Nations overview
World Bank clearly identified an Education Crisis (inadequate support and access to education for young students worldwide) which was unfortunately aggravated by Covid.
More, the digital rift widens the gap between richer and emerging economies where connectivity and digitalization are an absolute necessity. This is why the Unicef Re-imagine Education initiative aims at connecting “every child and young person — some 3.5 billion by 2030 — to world-class digital solutions that offer personalized learning to leapfrog to a brighter future.”.
Cost of Inaction would amount — according to the World Bank — to a US$10 trillion loss in earnings over the lifetime of this young generation.
We’re obviously at a pivotal moment in the history of education and digital learning is one of the most powerful lever to operate a shift.
Can The Metaverse Solve that?
Two things to understand.
First, technology as an enhancer of the Learning experience has always been present. If you’re old enough, you probably witnessed the transition from blackboard to PowerPoint through the overhead projector. Digitalization and virtualization are simply accelerating vectors catapulting speed and outreach.
Second, the market is in demand of new skills, simply because we shifted into a skill-economy, not a “degree-economy”. To make it simple,
- competition for skills is increasing
- lower skill-activities are being made redundant
- skill-acquisition cycles are shortened
- re-orientation at any stage of a career is becoming an important option.
The comfortable and sequential “Go to school, Get a (one) job” does not fly anymore and the WEB2 industry already responded:
HolonIQ (a leading platform in Market intelligence) published the Global list of Edtech Unicorns (start-ups valued at over $1 billion USD). (EdTech is the contraction of Education Technology)
The 35 listed companies account for a cumulated valuation of $118 billion (roughly the equivalent of Kenya’s GDP). Interestingly, the highest valuations are in India and China, respectively with $22 billion (BYJU’S) and $15.5 billion (Yuanfudao) leveraging cutting-edge applications, some of them available to Pre-K (children below the age of 5). BYJUS proudly shares being “on a mission to Empower 10 Million+ children by 2025”
What does Web3 has to do with it ?
Ed3 (Web3 in the educational landscape) provides the possibility of a non-linear learning curve where students can acquire skills from multiple sources and validate their knowledge in the blockchain. The “immersivity” of the learning experience through Augmented (AR) or Virtual Reality (VR) is another separator.
To make it simple, you don’t get a degree, you earn a token.
Let’s have a look at some interesting ED3 projects to illustrate and better understand the concept:
#1. EDVERSE, advised by the crypto-incubator TDefi.
The demo-product is not available yet, yet the concept is quite engaging: All about creating and leveraging a virtuous ecosystem where
- Learners can access world leading teachers
- Educators can advertise their programs as an NFT
- Creators develop and incorporate the digital assets (the content) on the decentralized platform.
- Promoters can actually build and use Virtual Institutions as an asset. (as if they were owning a portion of a Campus and getting compensated for that).
The economy of this ecosystem will be “tokenized” via EDV (that’s the name of the token) minted on ELYSIUM, a carbon-negative blockchain. ELYSIUM will in fact, neutralize C02 emissions by using the transaction fees (gas fees) to plant trees. 70 000 acres of land (size of an island like Bonaire in the Caribbean) are to be “greened” through this initiative.
On paper, such a value proposition is very compelling. Let’s see how this project actually materializes.
#2. Aventis Metaverse is launching a similar initiative (AGS: Aventis Graduate School) for professionals across ASEAN via an hybrid concept combining physical and metaverse presence (referred to as a phygital approach). The WhitePaper details the ambition to become Asia’s First Metaverse Graduate School with a goal to improve “10;000;000 lives through affordable Graduate education by 2030”. The Alpha Launch is scheduled for Q1 2023.
#3. ROBLOX (54.1 million average daily users in this year’s first quarter); the well-known game platform is already very active on Ed3 via Roblox Education . The company shared an aspiration to engage no less than 100 M students in the Metaverse by 2030!!
As of today, you can learn 3D modeling concepts through the Galactic Speedway course for example.
Note :The currently troubled market is expecting a strong “bounce-back” performance from Roblox after a disappointing performance where RBLX lost 80% of its all-time high (November 2021) — currently traded at $26.87 per share.
#4. The Inspired Education group ( a prominent player in premium schools) launched their pilot projects in the UK and Italy respectively.
The group published in March 2022 a Press Release where its Education Director Nadim Nsouli stated:
“Using VR technology in our Inspired Metaverse will provide students with relational and immersive experiences that provoke inspiration, student cognitive development and connections, through collaborative virtual learning with classmates or Inspired students from across 5 continents.”
The reality is that we’re still at an early stage of Ed3 and as Vriti Saraf (Co-Founder of Ed3 DAO), put it nicely last year.
This visionary twitter post leaves us with a burning question.
WHAT NEEDS TO HAPPEN FOR ED3 TO BE DEPLOYED AT SCALE ?
This Metaverse incursion into the Education system will not happen overnight.
We can envision a scenario where the Ed3 will supplement and then complement the traditional system. Digitalization has anyway been permeating the “classical pedagogy” for several decades now. The Ed3 momentum is intrinsically connected to the triple-A MODEL: Accessibility/Affordability and Accreditations.
ACCESSIBILITY
Accessibility to Ed3 can be propelled by simple vectors such as Scholarships or affordable NFTs
· Scholarships when a promoter who owns the utility on the platform (the access to a specific coding or international business for example) can “take the risk” to vouch for a scholar who will in turn need to LEARN to payback the scholarship. This is a transparent way to Learn to Earn that entails transparency, trust, dedication and achievable results — good fundamentals in a knowledge economy.
There are more complex modalities in the tokenization process and its transferability but in essence, access to information and courses can be granted without having to physically move to school or disbursing a prohibitive entry-capital.
The “Learn to Earn” concept is not a theory. Bryan Flynn, CEO of Rabbithole (an authoritative web3 guide) shares in this Podcast that his company is responsible for creating $200 million worth for value (through the token) by helping no less than 16,000 students, half of them being from emerging economies.
Accessibility also warrants access to powerful networks and we all know that an influential network can dramatically change a trajectory. This is exactly the premise of Tail Lopez OG (original garage) Social Club offering NFT-Mentorships. The Sales Letter starts by a strong opening quote by Jim Rohn : “You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.”
AFFORDABILITY
Affordable NFTs (below $100) is also a way to distort the rationale that Education must be expensive. NFT-fractionalization for example, enables learners to step in programs or part of programs they would otherwise never be able to afford.
What is NFT-fractionalization in the Education sphere? You can target, go through and validate a specific module ,not all the program. (For those who knew music when it was on CDs — you buy the top song you like, not the entire Album!)
Airdrop (by which a project graciously offers token to grow its community) is also in the arsenal to facilitate credit acquisition for courses…
As an interim conclusion, the barriers of entry can be significantly lowered…as long as the overall business model is healthy, quality-driven and of course profitable throughout the ecosystem.
ACCREDITATION
The Metaverse version of Education obeys to the very same rules as in the physical word. Who you’re learning from is very relevant. Yet, the shift into the Metaverses refocuses on the What, liberating transferability and velocity. Let me explain.
The blockchain transparently records the newly acquired competences. It is therefore very easy to automate models determining the correspondence or gaps between two different Meta-school-degrees (NFTs).
This sounds a little far-fetched as of 2022, but this is actually opening doors to geographic and digital mobility (transferability).
- An example would be in the field of medicine where some specialists sometimes need to re-train when they relocate in another country. A metaverse-model would allow a doctor to proactively complete the outstanding pieces of the desired curriculum virtually before moving to the target country. They could even pre-work with their colleague…saving an immense amount of time.
- A second use-case would be for recruiters who will quickly identify the exact skills of a candidate (through their NFT profile), which will in turn fluidify the recruitment process because of a highly calibrated research…
Warning: We’re not there yet but the skill-credentials are likely to become a key-element of your Metaverse avatar.
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Ed3 is redefining the rigid framework of competence acquisition. It is obviously not the panacea to the global learning crisis. However, it’s likely to be one of the unavoidable remedies. The cost of action or inaction will determine the future of the generations to come.
If you liked this article, I will probably not hear you clap, but I’ll see it :-). Feel free to share if you think it will be of value to your network.
Author: Olivier Malanda | Business Developer — Web3 enthusiast
