The Future of Education

The rapid pace of technological development and its impact on education, creates new objectives around empowering students with lifelong learning skills and preparation for labor market realities. In the context of Palestine, this takes on an added urgency. Issues around quality and standards in education are linked to relevance for the future. In Palestine, educational transformation has been deeply affected by twin crises: one the continuing impact of the Israeli occupation, the other the Covid-19 pandemic. These external factors place added pressure on the need to re-imagine the purpose and value of meaningful education. Adopting technology in Palestine has been changing education institutions and what the educational future might look like concerning critical thinking, creative reflection, problem solving, and analytical skills needed for success in college, career, and civil life. Al-Quds Open University has been a pioneer in adapting technology in blended learning environments to mitigate the political and social constraints of Palestinian life. This paper highlights the experience used in QOU to manage these crises and presents key factors that have made this process successful: 1. Educational content, 2. Teacher readiness and preparation, 3. Availability of ICT infrastructure for blended learning environment.

Palestine needs a systematic strategy to include key factors for renovating its educational system. These include content, instructional design, tutor skills, technical tools, available resources, flexibility, quality, equity, diversity, decision making, blended learning and M-learning. To do this under Occupation conditions is challenging enough. To do it with a deadly pandemic is extremely difficult. This paper outlines the issues and opportunities to reinvent education through a blended approach that empowers others. The nature of QOU as an innovative educational provider is an excellent example of human ingenuity tested in difficult circumstances. The process of change in Palestine links not simply to the technologies of blended learning but also to active student engagement in the education process, flexible curricula and innovative methods of teaching. In countries like Palestine, the impact of external socio-political realities is addressed directly by technological imagination. Occupation conditions underline decades of disruption, violence and fragmentation linked to significant economic underdevelopment. Education offers a bridge to other possibilities where technology expands horizons and access. The Corona virus pandemic has exposed systemic failure of existing structures. Whatever the nature of this at many levels (epidemiological, economic, sociological and psychological), one thing is certain - when the medical issues are contained there is no way Palestine can snap back to life before the pandemic. This means that the analysis of change (both required and forced) must be located in a realization of need for a renewed focus on innovation, values and free enquiry underpinned by blended learning.

Keywords: blended learning, technology, systemic crisis, innovation, critical thinking.