Prepare the youth for a digital era

We are almost 20 years into the 21st century, but most classrooms still rely purely on physical textbooks and teaching methods that have been in use since the beginning of the first Industrial Revolution.

Some schools have taken steps towards implementing technologies such as interactive whiteboards and multimedia — in most cases, traditional teaching tools are replaced by technology — but transformation is not taking place as one would hope.

Teachers still rely on end-of-term tests or general assessments to determine whether pupils understand the concepts that they are being taught.

Marks are given and the assumption is made that pupils performing better than the class average studied. The analysis is therefore purely based on one set of outcomes, typically at the end of a learning unit.

Yet cognitive science teaches us that people can only be creative and critical thinkers in a specific field if they have mastered sufficient domain knowledge.

In a true blended learning environment, the use of data and analytics can play a big part in preparing pupils for the challenges of a digital 21st century. But how do you take traditional education and truly transform it into digital teaching to benefit pupils? Further, how do you offer learning and personalised teaching to suit individual pupils?

Only by analysing the amount of data generated by pupils and by looking at their learning habits — how they study, for how long and so on — can a new learning solution be offered if old solutions seem to be failing.

Only by analysing the big data can a true and effective 21st-century approach be achieved to prepare our youth for the fourth Industrial Revolution.