Christian Rebernik from Tomorrow’s Education
Biography of the speaker
Christian Rebernik studied Information and Communication Services and Business Informatics at the Technikum Wien. After initial work experiences as a software developer, he covered several C-roles in multiple Austrian and German ventures, such as Immobilien, PARSHIP, Zanox AG, N26 and Vivy. He now mentors several international start ups and he is the CEO and co-founder of Tomorrow’s Education, a mobile-first university that aims to build the next generation of online learners and changemakers.
Question 1: Tomorrow’s Education was publicly launched in January 2021 and is now accepting applications for the first student cohort who, upon completion of the course, will be awarded a Professional Master of Sustainability, Entrepreneurship and Technology (SET). Can you tell us more about your venture?
CR: Think of Tomorrow’s Education as the university in your pocket. It’s a mobile-first platform that allows students to learn whenever their schedule allows them to do so and from any place in the world. We replaced long Zoom meetings that are ubiquitous in current online programmes with a more interactive concept that engages students via active learning methods. The sessions are shorter with an average of 15 minutes per session. The great thing is that students retain 60% more through shorter and interactive classes. Our first launched programme is a professional Master’s degree in sustainability, entrepreneurship and technology, a one-year part-time programme. We decided to start with this degree because regardless of your field of expertise, you need skills in these three areas to succeed in the future. We believe that now and more so in the future, companies will need problem solvers, people who can understand and apply technology. The sustainability part is also very important: every future leader needs to understand what actions he or she can take to fight the climate crisis, such as participating in circular economy or offsetting emissions. These are the kind of changemakers we are looking for: people who strive to be advocates for the future.
ZV: Very interesting points, especially what you mentioned about retaining knowledge and having a shorter lesson duration. A big part of the university experience is about working together. How would people work together for Tomorrow’s Education classes?
CR: To answer this question, I will give you first a bit of background about myself. I started a degree in economics and, unsurprisingly, I quit after a few years. It just wasn’t for me: studying just to get a good grade in the exam didn’t make any sense. And I didn’t need a course on human resources to learn about it. So, I started my own company and then all of a sudden, I had to actually do human resources. It was super interesting and exciting, because I had a reason to learn. This is how we believe that students should learn: set up a challenge and let them dig into it. Every course you take at Tomorrow’s Education starts with a challenge. Instead of you needing to research online to complete the challenge or read endless books, we offer bite-sized sessions with curated content developed by our university partners in Vienna and MIT. It is easily digestible and delivered in a fun and engaging way.
ZV: What kind of challenges will the students face?
CR: There are several kinds of challenges. Some can be as simple as delivering five customer interviews about a product. Others might be more complex and might include thinking about how to develop sustainable cities and promoting responsible food consumption. An example of a question that our students might tackle is: how do we create a more efficient and mobile transport bay for electric scooters in Berlin?
Question 2: For the first cohort, Tomorrow’s Education is looking for 50+ candidates with an undergraduate degree and 3+ years of work experience. Can you tell us more about the recruitment process for students? What do you look for in potential candidates?
CR: We want students who have the ambition to work on something meaningful, something that will have a positive impact on their environment. We want to give them the right equipment and the right skills to deal with the world of the future. They need to have three years of professional experience and they need to speak English fluently. You also need to show us that you strongly believe in your life mission and that you are eager to make an impact. There will be discussions around your and our values to understand whether Tomorrow’s Education is a good fit for you. We are limiting the first cohort to 10 students so we can properly assess our tools. In the fall, we are opening up for more students.
ZV: It seems as though the focus of your application is more about being a driven individual, with a clear mission and set of values. Is there anything in place to ensure fairer opportunities for all students?
CR: Accessibility is very important for us. We have a number of scholarships/grants available through our partners and we offer income share agreements. We’re trying to move away from the standard application processes where you look at what university the student went to or what employer they had. We want talented and driven individuals who can create a great community and can speak to the investor, mentor and employer networks that we have at Tomorrow’s Education.
ZV: Continuing our conversation around students, why do you think they will be particularly driven to apply to Tomorrow’s Education?
CR: The main belief is that we want our students to have the freedom to make their own choices in their career, whether they want to create their own company or work for one. Our students are changemakers who are capable of solving problems with a growth mindset. We believe that learning is a lifelong process; it’s part of life and we want to build a community of people who are excited about learning new and useful skills and are keen to share their knowledge and help others understand. Every student who comes to us will have the chance to learn and teach. From my personal experience mentoring several startups, I never stop learning. I’m able to share my experiences and thoughts with like-minded entrepreneurs who want to challenge the status quo. If you subscribe to being a lifelong learner, defining yourself will be a lot easier. Continue to be humble, because there is really never too much to learn.
Question 3: Tomorrow’s Education proposes a challenge-based learning format, where students can “solve dynamic problems in real-time”. Can you tell us more about this new learning framework? How does it differ from more traditional learning formats?
CR: I think that a challenge-based approach is the new state of the art in learning. It’s among the best strategies to retain and apply knowledge and the best part is that it’s fun, too! Our challenges are integrated in the whole curriculum and if you look on our website you can see that every course starts with a challenge; this gives you a reason and a purpose to learn and grow. The role of the teacher is also shifting. We don’t believe that we need teachers who lecture for two hours. At Tomorrow’s Education we have mentors who support you over the course of the challenge and answer questions you might have to develop your ideas. Our mentors are usually experts who are experienced in the field, someone who you can engage with and learn best practices from. We also have ambassadors who act as role models for students and peer groups who you can interact with to challenge your knowledge and expand your horizons.
ZV: Very interesting analysis on the people involved in Tomorrow’s Education. You mentioned that the role of the teacher is shifting; who is leading the classes at Tomorrow’s Education then? What kind of experience do these teachers have?
CR: The role of teachers is different; teachers are not the center of attention at Tomorrow’s Education, students are. Teachers are there to support the students’ experience. I can give you a very basic example: if you want to talk to your teacher about something, you schedule a meeting in their calendar and you show up with questions to discuss. You need to be the driver. This requires our students to be driven and self-organised individuals who want to learn. Tomorrow’s Education is not just like any other school. If you simply navigate from one class to another without engaging, you won’t learn much. You need to recognise that you need support and ask for help. When it comes to content creation, we have a team devoted to creating the best content but the question is: what makes a content good? How can we convey it in the best possible way? There is plenty of information out there and it is very often biased. How do we solve this ? We train our students to be critical thinkers. We want them to be able to assess problems systematically and critically.
ZV: This is a very interesting take: I like the emphasis on skills development as opposed to knowledge gathering. How do you ensure that the skills that you are teaching your students with the most education are sought after by the employers?
CR: We are in constant conversations with our partners. To understand even better, we talk to startups through our ambassadors who pledge to lifelong learning as well. The ultimate goal of Tomorrow’s Education is to provide you with the tools to support you throughout your entire life journey, advancing your knowledge and experience at every step. The key competencies that we focus on are meant to be long-term and they include analytical, entrepreneurial, technological and collaborative skills.
ZV: It seems as though you’re equipping the person with the skills that will be needed to become a modeller of the world; depending on where you place your students, they will be able to adjust and contribute. A wild card, basically! Can you tell us more about the incentives for students to join Tomorrow’s Education?
CR: For starters, students in our program enter a unique community, which is not necessarily located in one place. We’re building a global network that can help extend students’ reach across international borders. This is not to say that we don’t believe in the power of in-person interactions. There’s still power in building offline relationships, of course. But we think that the future of universities is not in one single location. It’s more decentralised and flexible. We want to create learning hubs across the world where our corporate partners, mentors or ambassadors can meet our students to share knowledge, experience and build something incredible. The first learning hub will be in the University of Vienna and the first tech group will be here in Frankfurt in a co-working space. What you will see in the future is that we will expand our network massively and you will be able to access local learning hubs. The great thing for students is that they can experience a new culture whenever they enter a new learning hub and we don’t impose on them which hub to visit. They may visit the hub in Shenzhen for a couple of weeks, to then move to Silicon Valley and be mentored by tech leaders. This is something we feel very strongly about and we are very excited for what comes next at Tomorrow’s Education!
ZV: Thank you for your answers, Christian! We can’t wait to see what great things you will do at Tomorrow’s Education.
Key takeaways
- Technology, sustainability and entrepreneurship: three areas that the leaders of the future must master.
- The mindset of a lifelong learner is key to succeeding in the future of work.
- The university of the future is built around decentralised learning hubs that students can access for their development and support.
Closing statement
We thank Christian for taking the time to speak with us. If you want to read more about Tomorrow’s Education, please feel free to visit their website. Since you’re here, why not look at our other publications on Rethinking HE?
