The Future of Education

The purpose of the presentation is to raise awareness of new concepts in adult education, targeted at college or university students and advanced level EFL learners. A brief historical reference is made to the dialectical relationship between three (3) classical educational models, namely Knowle’s Andragogy, Freire's social change, and Mezirow's transformative learning, following a comparison with Siemens's Connectivism which is viewed as the foundation in the contemporary reality of digital learning. The eight principles of this modern educational model are analyzed, as well as their application to today’s adult classroom to promote the education of the future. Connectivism accentuates, as an overarching concept, the exponential increase in knowledge acknowledging that knowledge is distributed over a network of links and adult learners learn to navigate a multitude of online knowledge sites (nodes). The application of connectivism is achieved through various e-learning tools such as smart phones, tablets, laptops for direct access to online knowledge sources. More specifically, examples are given selectively from sources such as YouTube videos, the ERIC electronic database of peer-reviewed journal articles, google docs, and Wikipedia talk pages for critical thinking development and implementation of collaborative activities. Examples of educational web-based applications are also given as a means of improving academic writing and enhancing self-directed or inquiry-based learning and innovative teaching approaches from the field of computational and corpus linguistics. In addition, the need to use the above web-based teaching tools for updated adult lifelong knowledge is emphasized. Finally, an overview of the futuristic trends that will determine adult education and the wider educational context is provided.

Keywords: Connectivism, online learning, adult education, updated knowledge.

References:
[1] Paroutsas, D. K. (2010). Adult education: issues and  theoretical opinions. Retrieved from 
https://paroutsas.jmc.gr/adlt_edu.htm
[2] Siemens, G. (2005). Connectivism: A learning theory for the digital age. International Journal of Instructional Technology and Distance Learning, 2(1), 3-10.
[3] Utecht, J., & Keller, D. (2019). Becoming relevant again: Applying connectivism learning theory to today’s classrooms. Critical Questions in Education, 10(2), 107-119.