What is the Future of Teaching?

Posted on 01. Sep, 2009 by jon in Education, Revolution, Using Technology

Great article from Josh Catone in Mashable yesterday entitled What is the Future of Teaching? I posted a follow-up in the comments and wanted to share. Here it is. Looking forward to hearing your thoughts in the comments!

Great article Josh. I’ve spent *tons* of time thinking about this over the last decade. Here’s my quick take:

#1 – Online vs traditional learning can be viewed across three vectors: Cost, convenience and quality.

There is little doubt that its cheaper to run classes online (no facilities costs, less personnel required, etc.). There is also little doubt that online classes are more convenient. You can take them from home, office, etc. and likely have a more flexible schedule than traditional classes offer.

However, the big question is around quality. I’d offer (and this is coming from the CEO of a company that specializes in online classes) that on quality alone traditional classes are still better. But what’s interesting is that the gap is narrowing quickly. It’s not at all unrealistic to envision a future in which the online class is significantly more engaging and effective than its offline equivalent. If that happens then guess what? Game over for the traditional class model (after all, why would you choose something that is more costly, less convenient and lower quality?).

#2 – I do disagree with the notion that the price of education is going to zero.

I believe in The Grand Unified Theory of the Economics of Free (I think that’s the right title…it’s a TechDirt post from back in the day) which states while abundant resources will trend towards zero (their marginal cost), the spreading of those very same resources will drive up the prices for scarce resources. In music, a band gives away MP3s (abundant resource) and makes more money from concert tickets. MIT gives away OCW material but more people hear about MIT (especially in developing countries) which leads to more demand for MIT degrees.

The abundant resources (e.g., textbooks, audio/video recordings of lectures, etc.) will tend towards free. That makes total sense. What will not tend towards free will be things like the value of a scarce degree (Ivy League degrees are likely to become valuable not less), a teacher’s time or the attention of the students. To say that education will be free assumes that the marginal costs of those things are zero which is almost certainly not true. Sure you’ll always have people who might volunteer to teach a free class (just like a band might play a benefit concert for free) but that doesn’t mean this will happen at scale anymore than any other industry can expect to draw talented people in if they aren’t being paid.

#3 – Flat out, we need better tools.

And to get better tools we need more innovation and investment. While education is a huge industry ($2 trillion by many estimates) I think it’s safe to say that social gaming has received more investment in recent years despite being a much (much!) smaller industry. The problem is that while it’s easy to look at a social game and figure out how to squeeze out some short-term cash it is much (much!) harder to look at a big industry with huge structural problems and figure out how to improve it. And improving it likely will take a lot of time and patience. It won’t be a “Build one thing in year 0. Have billion dollar company in year 3.” scenario.

But there are a lot of great people trying. Check out places like 2tor, Academic Earth, Cramster, Grockit, Knewton, LiveMocha, PrepMe, School of Everything, Smart.fm, TeachStreet, Tutor.com, Tutorvista and a whole host of others that I’m sure I’m forgetting to see what I’m talking about.

Oh, and of course us. :) (http://www.edufire.com)

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Jon Bischke

Apparently my comment on Mashable isn't visible which is strange because it certainly wasn't spam. They must be having a Facebook Connect issue. Anyway, I'm glad I posted here so some people will get a chance to read it. :)

KirstenWinkler

Time works for educhange :).

As money is involved in two ways (saving and earning) it is only a matter of time until we reach the critical mass.

On the saving side we need the political will. This is of course not the best reason for change but it will be a kind of agregator. California wants to switch to ebooks to save money, Texas is thinking about it etc.

On the earning side we have those numbers how much money is virtually on the table. Last sign here: Rosetta Stone going online, investing lots of money in TOTALe to catch up with platforms like Livemocha and others. They won't risk this if they would not see benefit on the horizon.

This whole market is still very young, far away of being mainstream. But the potential is huge.

Salar Salahshoor

In regard to #2, I completely agree with Jon about the value of traditional education increasing, at least until nano-tech and other paradigm shifts come into play.

Not only are ivy league degrees scarce and will continue to be valuable, but we need to take into account the type of value education is providing as a whole. I am mostly referring to the book, "The Experience Economy" here if you are interested in learning more.

Basically, we have been exponentially evolving from an agrarian economy to the present service/experience based economy. As we progress through these different stages, with changing societal expectations and perceptions of value, the profit margins of businesses operating in the old economies gets smaller and smaller.

Education is not only a valuable, high profit margin industry, but I would argue that it is at the top of the pyramid for value creating industries. The value transferred through education is transformational, that is the key.

Within the experience economy you have high profit margin/value experience businesses (e.g. live music, hollywood movies, video games, Google, Nordstrom, etc.) and you have the higher value classification of a transformation business (i.e. Universities, biotechnology, etc.), that result in transforming the person who interacted with the service, for better.

My main point here is that the transformational effects of a great education (mostly delivered through the traditional models) are invaluable. So much so, that it can cost close to $250,000 to receive such services over a two to four year period (depending on the school and subject studied), with relatively inelastic price characteristics. Meaning there will always be a much larger demand than supply and the price will happily rise, and people will happily continue to pay top dollar. Just look at how much it costs to see Bill George or other business leaders at a speaking engagement for 2 hours ($5k +). Talk about profit margins.

If you are interested in profit margins, provide value. I am hard pressed to find anything more valuable than education. Also, consider the amount of debt held by college graduates for their degrees. Compare this amount of debt held on any other intangible asset, and it will give you an idea of the value society places, and will continue to place on education.

I see eduFire with a great opportunity to capture the real valuable part of education and provide it online. It won't be long before we see $10,000 classes listed. That is because the value is in the wisdom of people who you pay to engage with and learn from, whether online or in a classroom, although there will always be more value placed on in person meetings, until virtual reality takes off. :)

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