EDUCATION
IN 2032
THE FIVE BIG SHIFTS WHICH COULD CHANGE HOW WE LEARN.
THE FIVE BIG SHIFTS
T H E F I V E B I G S H I F T S
1.
Super apps &
super tutors.
MIGHTY’S VIRTUAL COURSES AND CREATOR PROFESSORS
White-label, purpose-built creator platforms such as Mighty Networks and Kajabi have been making it easy and lucrative for professors, thought leaders, makers and masters of their craft to set up communities and courses; earning a living from teaching what they know to students around the world, in their way and on their terms.
TENCENTS VIPKID
SUPER TUTOR PLATFORM
VIPKid, founded in 2013, is an online education platform providing children with one-on-one online English courses, and links teachers from North America with Chinese kids aged 4 to 12.
The latest data from the company showed it has enrolled more than 90,000 foreign teachers in its network, enabling them to work with 700,000 users across the world.
NB - Since China’s crackdown on tutoring apps, many Chinese-owned offerings have shut down or significantly reduced their operations.
THE (POTENTIAL)DISNEY
EDUCATION ECOSYSTEM
Disney has the unique ability to create and acquire captivating edutainment like Hamilton, and use the IP to grab student attention, partner with the best teachers to develop courses with Disney IP at the center, build online and real-world experiences that allow students to continue to explore and to rethink what assessments and credentials mean online, using the trusted Disney brand to push change where others have struggled to gain traction.
(via NotBoring)
T H E F I V E B I G S H I F T S
2.
The Tiktok-ification of teaching.
MISS EXCEL AND HER
$3M A YEAR EMPIRE
KatKat Norton is a Microsoft Excel influencer. She has over a million followers on TikTok and Instagram, where she goes by the name Miss Excel, and she’s leveraged that into a software training business that is now generating up to six figures of revenue a day. And she’s only been doing this
since June 2020.
THE EXPLOSIVE
RISE OF BOOKTOK
For the uninitiated, BookTokers are users who dedicate their TikTok posts to book-related content, whether it’s reviews, recommendations, or reenactments. In November, Mic declared that the community is “completely changing publishing.”
To date its generated 43 Bbllion views and has sent Barnes & Noble
sales soaring.
TIKTOKS ACTIVE PUSH
INTO LEARNING
#LearnOnTikTok brings together 800 household names across industries to deliver short-form creative learning content. Some of the big names include long-time TV educator Bill Nye, YouTuber-turned NBC host Lilly Singh and astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson.
TIkTok also announced a huge $50 million creator fund for
educational content.
T H E F I V E B I G S H I F T S
3.
Immersive
educational experiences.
LEARN AND PLAY
ON ROBLOX
Roblox has set themselves the goal of 100M students engaged in high-quality learning in the metaverse by 2030.
To get there, they’re partnering with educational organizations and developers to bring high-quality learning experiences to the metaverse through sponsored grants, investments, and advances, transporting students through space and time into virtual worlds designed for exploration, investigation, and experimentation.
BUILD EUCATIONAL WORLDS IN FORTNITE CREATIVE
Students love playing games like Fortnite. What if they could enjoy learning history, math, science, or social studies while they play and create? Well, they can. Fornite has created a plethora of courses to get teachers up and running with Fortnite Creative, to encourage them bring interactive 3D into their classrooms.
TURN GAMING SKILLS INTO REAL WORLD SKILLS
Funded by the Department of Education, Game Academy analyses the skills needed to play specific game titles and then matches players with how they could use those skills in a real world job and what they may
be suited to.
Everything that Game Academy does is powered by cutting-edge technology and scientific research. They’ve looked at the game traits and behaviours of 50,000 players and the top 500 games on the Steam game hub and built a large dataset that can connect traits in game play with skills and careers.
T H E F I V E B I G S H I F T S
4.
Self-directed simulations.
MASTER THE PIANO
VIA OCULUS QUEST
Magic Keys on Oculus Quest in an AR app, developed initially for tablets and then the HoloLens and Magic Leap One. Now that the Quest’s experimental passthrough API is available, it has been ported over to the Oculus Quest.
The app leverages AR to present the notes overlaid on a live view of a real piano and has the potential to be a game changer for this type of learning.
LEARN CONTENT EDITING SKILLS VIA LEGO VIDIYO
Lego have partnered with Universal Music have launched an app called VIDIYO - on it, kids can create their own music videos, using IRL Lego, AR effects and a vast music library. It’s great example of the unleashing of new cohorts of creators, encouraging them to make their own entertainment.
TOUR ANCIENT EGYPT WITH ASSASINS CREED DISCOVERY
In 2018, Ubisoft launched Assassin's Creed: Origins Discovery Tour - a mode that will allow you to explore ancient Egypt without being interrupted by combat or quests. Purely educational, the mode is a virtual museum with guided tours and historical sites to discover.
Audio commentary guides you through different experiences, whilst a Passport tab tracks your progress. There is also the Timeline tab, which gives you an overview of the time periods of
ancient Egypt.
T H E F I V E B I G S H I F T S
5.
Blockchain-based
credentials.
THE EDUVERSE:
WEB3 TO ED3
In the Eduverse, teacher avatars will teleport around to digital edtech hubs, where they can learn new technology skills to add to their credential chains. They’ll pop into marketplaces, where they can, say, trade lesson plans they’ve created for tokens. They’ll check out career centers where they can look for new jobs. And they’ll relax in lounges, where they can chat with fellow teachers from other countries.
TOKENISED CREDENTIALS
AND LEARN TO EARN
RabbitHole helps individuals go down the “crypto rabbit hole” by rewarding them for using crypto applications on smart contract blockchains like Ethereum and Polygon.
They’re an example of new ‘learn to earn’ platforms that are emerging, encouraging developers and everyone else to play around with web3 applications, get familiar with them and earn crypto tokens, ‘badges’ and rewards in the process.
COMMUNITY KNOWLEDGE SHARING AND EDU DAO’S
The Crypto, Culture, & Society DAO is also an experiment in building an educational institution directed by learners, not administrators. To make the group financially sustainable, the DAO plans to sell NFTs that grant owners access to future courses, plus provide educational services to other DAOs. Some of the non-fungible tokens will be reserved as “scholarship seats” for people underrepresented in the crypto world.
As Albert Einstein once said - “play is the highest form of research” - and how we play is changing, therefore so too should the way we approach teaching and learning.
Gaming, web3, TikTok, super tutors, and virtual experiences are all new potential levers in an expanding educational toolkit.
It’s time to embrace them.