Big shift in education
THE school week could be cut to three days as Victoria’s growing cohort of students are taught in shifts, according to an education expert.
The state faces an education boom with an extra 50,000 students predicted to enrol over just eight years.
Deakin University associate professor of digital learning Tom Apperley said the ballooning numbers might push students from the classroom to online learning.
He said schools could introduce “shifts”, rotating students through fewer classroom lessons and offering top-up education online.
“In 20 or 30 years times, school won’t be an everyday affair,” Prof Apperley said.
“As state-funded schools continue to grow, they might only offer a student three or four days a week. Or they might just go to offering half days and shifts for students.
“Digital infrastructure will take the pressure off our physical infrastructure.”
Education experts have also predicted that schools will stop teaching subjects like maths, science, reading and music as individual lessons.
Instead, project-based learning will combine multiple areas of the curriculum.
Lessons could also be “gamified” — a teaching style borne out of video games — with students earning rewards or digital badges for small tasks.
A string of these little tests would replace larger exams, Prof Apperley said.
“Students will need to unlock lessons A, B and C before they can go onto D,” he said.
“It makes learning fun and gives people incentive.”
One Catholic primary school in Melbourne’s northeast already teaches literacy to its prep students using a computer game. Other state-ofthe-art schools have done away with pens and paper in favour of iPads and computers.
Many have opted for openplan classrooms or no formal classrooms at all, as is the case with six-storey South Melbourne Primary School.
The vertical school designed by Hayball will open next year and include an integrated early learning centre, maternal and child health services and community sports courts.
Hayball director Richard Leonard said architects were using neuroscience to design schools that best promote learning.
“The traditional classroom of 25 tables all facing the front with one teacher is a stark contract to the possibilities the future offers.”
More university students are now also opting for “digital degrees”. Deakin University was Australia’s first to offer degrees delivered completely online. Harvard, Oxford, Stanford and MIT also offer free online short courses.