They say change is the only constant node in life and we find it holds true at every step of the way. Let’s take a look at how our means of communication have changed from the epistolary to the digital era. Many opine that we are currently going through the Fourth Industrial revolution. Indeed technology undergoes a transformation in lightening speed and along with that vastly alters our everyday lives.
With the advent of the world wide web and its ever-changing innovations, each and every facet of our lives have evolved unrecognisably. Be it our economy where from the days of goods bartering, we have arrived at instantaneous UPI transfers or our transportation modes which have evolved from bullock carts to hybrid self-driven cars, change is palpable in every aspect of our lives. One industry which not only has undergone a change in itself but also has stimulated the change in other domains is that of education.
Come to think of it, be it our digital transformation or the developments in our economies, all are factored upon new inventions which entail extensive degrees of research and study. Therefore the pivotal arena where change is taking place and rightfully so is the education sector. We might not pay attention to the changing trends in education, but they are very much present as any trend that keeps changing with a change in technology and new concepts.
Even in the practical terms, our classrooms and modes of teaching are evolving and upgrading with every passing year to keep pace with the changing trends in the outside world. From the subject matters to the pedagogical methods, the entire process of education has marked a significant degree of progress compared to the yesteryears. Just like any trends, many argue about the outcomes of these current trends in education, whether they are right or wrong.
The educational sector has recorded positive changes in every tier of education. Right from the primary classrooms to the university levels, we see newer techniques being deployed in teachings and even reading materials have changed substantially. Within the larger education sector, professional degrees happen to one of the most prominent harbingers of changes. As the cradle of future professionals, these degrees reflect the tides of the times as well as future prospects.
With the rapidly changing industrial space, it is imperative to upgrade our courses and their applications according to the raging needs of the time. The first step to acing that would be to keep abreast of the trends of the current years as well as projected trends of the upcoming years. We have culled out some of the most prominent education trends in 2023 here.
Top Education Trends in 2024
1. Technological Upskilling across domains
Technology and human labour have been pitted against each other traditionally. This is mostly due to the fear that technology is likely to displace humans. However, technology is designed by humans for supporting human labour. So if any, both forge a symbiotic relationship with each other. Once that fear is gotten rid of, the focus must be laid on adapting to the technological developments that come our way.
In that context, technological upskilling has emerged as one of the dominant education trends in 2024. Different industries are heading towards workflow automation. But the human interface is absolutely important for a smooth workflow. Therefore, as more and more businesses adopt cloud convergence, candidates who are savvy with the latest cloud technology are more employable. Accordingly, professional courses are focusing on building cloud-based technological skills.
To match up to the expectations of employers, cloud and related technology training programmes are increasingly becoming popular among both campus-based as well as online educational endeavours.
This is precisely the reason upGrad has launched an Master of Science in Machine Learning & AI, the best engineering school in the country to create a program that teaches you not only machine learning but also the effective deployment of it using the cloud infrastructure. Our aim with this program is to open the doors of the most selective institute in the country and give learners access to amazing faculty & resources in order to master a skill that is in high & growing demand.
2. Inclusion of soft skills training in curriculum
An important education trend in 2024
is a marked shift from the subject-based rote learning to more skills-oriented learning methods. Educationists are emphasising on the importance of building the aptitude around cognitive thinking, problem solving and management. The application-based syllabus which steers away from mere facts and figures and instead goads the students to apply the learning into real-life scenarios are surfacing more and more.
Parallelly, holistic development of leadership skills, team-building skills, communication skills is being imbued in students through classroom learnings. With the emphasis on both offline and online training, students are being prepared to face real-world challenges.
This is a drastic change from the traditional by-the-book teachings of schools. Students are acquiring the necessary skills which will not only enable them to navigate around the world of work with confidence but also facilitate a well-informed and capable workforce for the days to come.
3. Innovation in the subject matter
Detailing is extremely important in today’s day and age. In tune with that, another vital education trend in 2024 captures the variety of subjects that are being included in mainstream college and university curriculum. From applied linguistics to artificial intelligence, from food anthropology to ethical hacking, from culture studies to acabus science, the courses and subject choices available these days are indeed out of the box and revolutionary in many ways.
The course structure and assessment modules are also designed to maintain a practical outlook and take away the stress of memorisation. The acknowledgement that there is merit in studying and a need for studying non-mainstream subjects for better assessment of our current socio-political problems and deducing appropriate solutions is a far cry from the obsession with an engineering or a medical or a law degree. Newer specialisations have opened up more scope of innovations within the professional spheres.
Read more: Artificial Technology Latest Articles, Tutorials & Resources
4. Personalised and inclusive learning spaces
A heartening and long overdue education trend in 2024 has to do with more inclusive and accessible learning modules becoming increasingly widespread. Special education modules are no longer limited to only special schools but rather regular schools are adopting inclusive learning facilities for the ease of students living with disabilities. This is likely to have a remarkable impact on the employability of persons with disabilities.
This is another important step towards overcoming the biases against specially abled students. The world is finally waking up to the fact that there are countless Stephen Hawking’s whose geniuses are going underutilised just because of the lack of adequate resources and sensibilities. The inclusion of more accessible teaching tools and practices in the classrooms make it a hopeful education trend in 2024.
Apart from these four major education trends, there are also some other significant changes. One of them is the trend of virtual learning. Some might argue that this is not suitable under current trends in education as many institutions across the globe provide their students with the facility of virtual learning, but are still not predominant. After the pandemic hit hard, educational institutions were left with no choice but to embrace virtual and remote learning. Now that a huge number of people are exposed to the benefits of virtual learning, more institutes are willing to make it a norm. Needless to say, various worldwide online learning platforms like upGrad, and Google Academy also played a major role in this trend.
Another inclusion that is expected to gain massive popularity in the trends in education will be immersive learning. Even in 2024, using virtual reality and augmented reality may not be that accessible and is only used in very few areas such as medicine, architecture and engineering, but it can be expected that in the next five years, this trend will take over many more disciplines. Education trends like these have the capability to transform the idea of learning by making it extremely interactive and captivating for the students. Not only that, but immersive learning will also help the students understand critical topics way more easily. Students will get the least distracted as they will be immersed in the world of the classroom.
The current trends in education also include an interesting change which is the way in which people are preferring their lessons. Rather than sitting through a two-hour-long lecture, students are now preferring more compact and bite-size lessons that can be consumers on the go. This is termed “micro-learning”, and this might be the result of the fast-paced and multitasking lives that we are leading. Dividing a long lecture into smaller videos or interesting articles is something that is proven to be more beneficial for students as it does not pressure them to memorize and understand too many new concepts at a time.
The latter two trends in education are especially very useful as a study conducted by Microsoft state our attention span is continuously decreasing, which is why conventional learning methods may not work as efficiently as they used to. In the year 2000, the average human’s attention span was 12 seconds, which dropped to 8 seconds in 2013, after our surroundings started getting more and more digitalized. To understand the severity, even a Goldfish has an attention span of 9 seconds! This number is expected to drop even more as the newer generation will evidently be more exposed to addictive technology. Now that the human brain has evolved itself to adapt to its surroundings, it is extremely necessary to alter the learning methods as well.
While the overall education trends in 2024 incline more towards technological transformation and digitisation of classrooms as well as teaching methods, the educational sector seems to have a lot more to offer and to a much diverse audience in the upcoming years. This is likely to be complementary to the developments in the professional fields as well. While this bodes well for those who are still in education, those who have already sat through the benches need not despair yet.
This is because there are numerous Upskilling courses available for even early and mid professionals to wrap their heads around and enhance their professional skills. upGrad is one such online platform which offers a wide array of highly useful upskilling courses that anyone can enrol in and pursue at their own convenience, from the comforts of their homes. As they say, there’s no end to learning so what better way to learn than to follow the tides of the times and get ahead of the others through a little help from platforms like upGrad.
Wrapping up
It is the best time to upskill yourself with latest technologies. Checkout upGrad’s top courses in Data Science, Machine Learning, Digital Marketing, MBA & Full Stack Management.
You can also checkout our limited time free courses to utilize this lockdown to upgrade yourself.
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