Archive for August, 2010

Finally elearning becomes mainstream-Bill Gates says the future of education is online learning

Aug 13, 2010-Miami,FL At last now, finally, of all people, Bill Gates finally “gets” it. I’m talking about his 2010 annual letter from Bill Gates, where he emphasizes the importance of “online learning”. He also says that most universities and other educational institutions do it the wrong way and have not really caught on to the Real McCoy  of e-learning. They simply upload a video of a professor droning monotonously in a classroom to his students and upload it to their site (or to YouTube). The only effect it has on the web is that it may put off a large number of students-in a classroom only a few may be put off (or go to sleep).

However, this can  hardly be described as e-learning. A real e-learning course will have not only video but also a lot of interactivity using Flash animations and other simulations, multiple paths through which learners can proceed, the ability to set your own pace and so on. This is really helpful as it interests the learner and does not saddle him/her with information that is irrelevant. When I mentioned this to people on another forum, I was told that there is a lot of questions and answers back and forth in a classroom environment, which is not possible online. While some of it may be true, it can be easily corrected by collating all these questions and doubts and their answers and weaving it into the learning course. This will keep on making the elearning course better and better and at some point of time be much better than the best professor who teaches the subject.

Now comes the best part of the story so far. Let us imagine this ideal best professor to teach a particular subject, say Ststistics, is Mr. Smith at Harvard (just for an example) and the second best is his junior teaching assistant Ms.Jane. Their expertise in teaching statistics, plus their experience of students’ doubts, questions and arguments has led to the preparation of an excellent course. Now imagine that into this course design are added various animations, simulation exercises, examples from industry and business experts to form a formidable e-learning course. This course is now much better than the sum of its parts, so it is a degree of magnitude better than what Prof. Smith or Lecturer Jane would teach. Now this same course is made available online to 100,000 students worldwide- see the effects? Mindboggling.

This is what he meant by “the future of learning is e-learning”. This is exactly what we at Abhisam Software have been saying for years together but nobody seemed to notice. But I am happy that since good ol’ Bill “gets” it, everybody else will, sooner or later.

Why is this threatening to a lot of the “powers that be”? Because now you need not pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to go to an “elite” university to learn the above Statistics course. You can learn it at home for a few hundred dollars or a few thousand dollars. For anybody and everybody. You need not be “accepted” at a premier school. You need not “demonstrate your innate genius” to get inside the elite school for an opportunity to learn. In fact you need not step out of your home to learn. Or if you wish you could loll on a beach and get access to the same course. You can take it at your own pace. No need to take on endless student loans. No need to appeal to past teachers to get good letters of recommendation. No need to… I’ll stop here. You get the idea? E-learning is truly liberating, an idea which has come.

Obviously some elements would want to prevent this from happening. But the genie is out of the bottle and cannot be brought back.

Our own e-learning courses are priced to be very very affordable to learners in all parts of the world. For example the subject of Safety Instrumented Systems is taught by a few elite in classroom type classes a few times a year for as much as $3000. But you can get the same knowledge, when you take our e-learning version for just $199 (now being offered at a special of $177). This benefits everybody, including the subject matter experts who have contributed to this course as well as the learners.

Comments are welcome below.