The year 2013 was a year of hype for MOOCs (Massive Online Open Courses) just like the year 2023 is a year of hype for AI (Artificial Intelligence). MOOCs were promoted as a panacea to all the ills that plague education. In a decade, we see that MOOCs have indeed brought a lot of benefits. It is now possible to attend quality lectures at your own disposal from the comforts of your home through applications like Coursera, YouTube, Udemy, etc. These lectures are from well known teachers from universities like Stanford and Wharton. Many learners including me could not even dream of such a thing. However, have the MOOCs ‘transformed’ education?
In my opinion, to say that MOOCs have transformed or will transform education is an overstatement just like many are overstating today that AI will transform education. Mistaking ‘means’ for the ‘end’ is not something new and the same is true here in these overstatements. Technology is a means to an end and not an end in itself. In the case of education, that end itself is not clearly articulated. There is disruption needed in defining that end.
I spent four years to get a bachelors degree in technology in electronics and had to study more than 40 subjects and pass more than 40 semester-end examinations to get that degree. I hardly use any of it in my professional life today. There is no sine(theta), no cos(theta), no civil engineering beams, no microwaves, no semiconductor chips, nothing. It seems like a waste of those four valuable years!
There are many foundational and essential questions that need deliberation and answering. These questions go beyond the technology aspects. These questions may be related to the philosophy of education, learning science, etc. Some of the questions that come to my mind in random order are:
- Do we really need academic degrees? If yes, who needs them and who does not?
- Should we teach nuclear physics to first graders?
- Is it worth to spend more than 50K USD and immerse yourself in a decade of debt payment to complete your higher education?
- Should civic sense, morality, and mindfulness be a part of school curriculum?
- In the era of skills explosion, what skills matter in what geographies from an employment perspective?
- Should education be a state subject and controlled by governments through departments of education?
- Can I learn a foreign language in a month just to communicate in everyday parlance by spending 4 hours every day on learning?
- Can we create a taxonomy of all employable skills?
- Can I attend an eLearning course and learn how to play cricket?
I have tried ChatGPT, Bard, Github Copilot and many other AI tools. I am really enamored by what these tools can do and have promoted them in my social media posts. I am however not convinced that these AI tools are a replacement for human beings. They may assist humans in various tasks and help us achieve things faster and efficiently but these tools cannot think like we humans do. There are many relevant questions that need answering. Idolizing a technology will in itself not ‘transform’ education.
Postscript:
As an Edtech entrepreneur and someone closely associated with educational technology, I understand the value of these AI tools. For example, transcribing content from one language to another is now much better handled by machines than it was some years ago. Even today, it still needs revision by a human being but the tool itself in its first pass helps a lot in reducing the time needed for final delivery of the content.
After I drafted those questions above, I also asked ChatGPT the following question.
Sudhir Gupta's Blog 