A global revolution - incorporating education in media
Flipped learning is capable of flipping the world. A 24-year-old graduate school student in Canada took an MIT course ‘Electronic Circuit Theory’ from the comfort of his home without spending a cent. He was also able to simulate electronics circuit by using HTML5 and doing experiments on the web. Another 40-year-old popular blogger in Asia attended the University of Michigan’s‘Social Network Analysis 'course, by using his daily commutes to read and listen to the lectures. 60,000 users worldwide took the examination at the same time and discussed the projects together. The course lasted 8 tough weeks and when he finally got his certificate he said, “An employee may not go back to a physical school, but he can still learn about the most up-to-date information there is in his field for free.”
Without having to go abroad and being exempt frombig tuition fees, one can study in the top international universities, at home! Nowadays, with the recipe of multimedia, networking, social media, top schools around the world and autonomous learning on the part of the student, knowledge has become much more accessible across national boundaries. This new learning style strengthensthe competitiveness of the individual in the workplaceand with this new model, industrial landscapes have experienced change for the better. A global revolution in educational engagement has been underway and if you do not join, you will beleft behind!
Back in2010, Microsoft founder Bill Gates was brilliant, when he invested $1.5 million to KhanAcademy and$3 million in MOOC (Massive Open Online Courses) in 2012,through his foundation, in hopes of helping students in need. The New York Times described 2012asthe year of the MOOC, resulting to a positive impact in the field of higher education. As social media has altered the traditional media industry, the same will occur in universities across the world.
‘The World is Flat’author Thomas Fried man said,"Big breakthroughshappen when what is suddenly possible meets what is desperately necessary.” Daphne Koller, professor at Stanford University, very much agrees with this saying such that she andProfessor Andrew Ng founded Coursera network platform. This was an attempt to solve the problem of uneven distribution of higher education resourcesintop universities by providing free education courses online. In just one year, it attracted more than 2.4 million students enrolled worldwide.
The current global MOOC is divided into three platforms including Coursera, edX and Udacity. Coursera cooperates with more than 80 of the top universities in the world including Brown University, Columbia University and Princeton University .In addition, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Harvard University formed a joint venture, edX. Even Google X Labs founder Sebastian Thrun personally opened a course called ‘Introduction to Artificial Intelligence’, which attracted more than 160,000 students. He was able to reach so many students all at once that he resigned from teaching in schools two years ago and founded Udacity, another network platform.
Offering courses online for free earlier appeared like doing charity work, but starting in 2012, because the technology became so mature, companies began investing more resources and the business modelslowly took form. For instance, Coursera and Udacity are beginning to offer applications for certificates, job matching and other paid services. In an attempt to benefit the schools, students as well as business, "there must be a business model, to make MOOC more sustainable."
Even the media has transformed from plain press and TV to include education to survive in such a competitive market. Discovery Channel launched its own brand of electronic textbooks, Techbook, which integrates text, audio, video, images to facilitate learning, by having virtual labs and interactive games and exercises. Discovery Education CEO Bill Goodwyn has successfully branched out into the e-book market and his digital textbooks have helped over 1 million teachers and 35 million students in the US.
Financial Times, a British international daily newspaper with a special emphasis on business and economic news internationally, also reached out to Business Administration programs in various universities. As long as the school is willing to sign yearly contracts, it provides an open news platform, featuring news briefing, MBA Newslines and other educational services. For general network members, Financial Times launches micro films such as the "10 minutes to understand a financial statement" and "Test your financial IQ.”
Another great example is NBC News, another large media network, which launched NBC Learn, providing news reports, video contents and live events coverage to inspire and educate students all over the world in fields of science, finance, economics, etc. In the United States, more than five thousand academic institutions use NBC to teach. For example, on the NBC Learn website, there is a ‘digitalwatch election" section which use the unique chart presentation along with news media, to teach student show to analyze the figures of the presidential electionand further understanding the social and cultural implication sbehind them.
ResearchGate, known as the academic FB, issued by 3 million researches and scientists. ResearchGate was established in 2008 and received a $35 million investment from Bill Gates as well as endorsement by Germany Prime Minister Angela Merkel. The founder IjadMadisch, a Harvard graduate, proclaimed that ResearchGate would overthrow the traditional ways of academic research. His goal is to get the Nobel Prize. His confidence comes from its 3 million users worldwide who are researchers and 50 million research abstracts uploaded plus 11 million researchpapers published.
You don’t pay a dime but find other researchers who are doing the same research as you. Any research question gets answered within 48 hours through discussion forums. The greatest value of Research Gate comes from being able to reassess failed research papers since about 97% of top scientific experiments in the world have failed before. It would be great to be able to learn from the mistakes made in the past and not to duplicate them. A Pilipino scientist found a new method to extract energy from leftover foods but his project was rejected by the university due to political reasons. However, a scientist in Spain saw this paper and contacted this Pilipino scientist through ResearchGate. After some continued work, they successfully published their joint report in Germany.
How will incorporating education into media change the world?
How can you take advantageous from MOOC programs?
