The Future of Education

The pandemic shook the Australian education sector to its core. In just 18 months, Australia’s €27 billion education export sector shrunk by 34%, national and state standardised tests were abandoned, student wellbeing headlined, thousands of teachers left the profession and schools closed for extended periods as students adapted to learning from home, online.Through the experience, digital innovation did not stand still. The pandemic disrupted the technology that was meant to disrupt education. The pandemic highlighted the digital divide, learner data failure, the revaluation of student agency, and highly variable levels of digital maturity across local learning communities.

This paper explores:

• Evolving understandings of e-learning
• e-Learning innovations and trends throughout and beyond the pandemic:
  • New role-based Web conferencing environments that enable teacher specialisation and more extended and applied student learning
  • The virtualisation of video, indexed through AI to elevate constructivism and learners’ information synthesis skills
  • Resetting national online assessment platforms and credentials
  • Mass adoption of student emotion online check-in tools and new student wellbeing data sets
  • National and state tech initiative to address privacy, data security, digital learner profiles and cross-border learner data exchange
  • The acceleration of internationalised work-based learning platforms, and new alignments with micro-credentialing, online employment marketplaces and traditional education brands.

Keywords E-learning, disruption, learner agency, heutagogy, digital equity, Social Emotional Learning, AI, virtualisation, learner profiles, micro-credentialing, ethics

References
1. Looking to the Future Report: Shergold Education Review for the (Australian) Education Council https://cica.org.au/wp-content/uploads/Looking-to-the-Future-Report-June-2020.pdf

2. Schools Digital Strategy: NSW Government https://education.nsw.gov.au/about-us/strategies-and-reports/schools-digital-strategy