AI-generated summary
The future of education will prioritize the ability to ask good questions and learn independently over memorizing answers, reflecting the transformative impact of generative artificial intelligence (AI). As technology advances rapidly, educational models must adapt to prepare individuals for dynamic professional lives marked by continuous change. According to the Megatrends 2024 report, personalized, accessible, and lifelong learning paths will replace traditional one-size-fits-all approaches, enabling students to tailor their education to their unique needs, interests, and abilities.
Generative AI tools like ChatGPT already facilitate this shift by allowing educators to customize lessons quickly and dynamically, catering to diverse learning styles and paces. Combined with gamification and virtual reality, these technologies support immersive, engaging, and highly personalized learning experiences. Future classrooms will embrace lifelong learning, with students actively shaping their educational journeys and accessing real-time, skill-focused content through AI-driven platforms. Educational metaverses will further enhance learning by enabling interactive, hands-on experiences anytime and anywhere, making continuous professional development more accessible. The technology to realize this vision exists today, and the challenge ahead lies in harnessing it effectively to build an education system suited for life in an ever-evolving world.
Technology will help us find and obtain the training we will need throughout our lives.
In the future, it will be better for us to know how to ask good questions than to memorize their answers. If the emergence of generative artificial intelligence has taught us anything, it is this. Our job will be more about innovating than producing, and the classrooms of the future will need to prepare us for this. Technology will be your ally.
Adapting educational models
In an environment of constant change, knowledge will need to be constantly updated. So much so, that the most important skill will not be for students to learn the content itself, but to know how to continue learning on their own. This is according to the Megatrends 2024 report by the Bankinter Innovation Foundation.
Studying first to work and then retiring has long since passed away. In the same process are master classes, in which a teacher speaks for an hour while the students listen.
In the classrooms of the future, not only will the content be adapted to each student, but also their educational path will be unique. As Megatrends 2024 explains, in the new educational paradigm, itineraries will be increasingly personalized, accessible, decentralized and from cradle to retirement.
It is about preparing talent for a very dynamic professional life, deeply marked by the dizzying advance of technology and knowledge.
One (doesn’t) fit all
Let’s pause for a moment to talk about a hypothetical example. Imagine a classroom in which Pablo Picasso, J. S. Bach, Albert Einstein and William Shakespeare were sitting. The four have signed up for a general computer course because they have been told that computers can help them in their respective trades.
Does this example make any sense? Of course not. It is not only an anachronism that these four geniuses are sitting in the same classroom and that it is a computer room. It is also important that they all attend the same course and access the same content.
Although they would undoubtedly form a great group learning team, the reality is that each of them should receive training focused on their field of expertise. Such training should also be adapted to their abilities and even to their particular interests and learning style. What works for a physicist like Einstein does not have to be suitable for an artist like Picasso.
This is something that happens to any student and this is the scenario that many teachers face. They lack hours to offer their students an education as hyper-personalized as they need. Artificial intelligence is a tool that can help them achieve this.
Generative AI at your fingertips
Generative artificial intelligence tools open the doors to tailor-made itineraries and syllabi. For example, Chat-GPT is capable of modifying a lesson according to the instructions given by a teacher. In just a few seconds, you will change the format or presentation of that lesson to suit the needs of each individual student.
It also allows the student to stop at a specific point for additional explanations. It can also do so in multiple ways, from simplifying concepts to developing details.
These are use cases that are already there, at your fingertips. And the possibilities multiply if we add other techniques such as gamification to generative artificial intelligence.
Generative artificial intelligence tools allow this type of dynamic to be implemented in educational material in a very simple way. With countless variations of content and challenges specially designed for their abilities and preferences, students will be able to progress in their training at the pace they need and with the right motivation.
Formation to the millimeter
As we have seen, the classrooms of the future will welcome all types of students and they will do so at any time in their lives. This means that, in the education to come, the student will take a much more active role when defining their training itinerary. You will need to look for what you need at all times and know where to find it.
To do so successfully, they will need to have access to the content they need. Technology, again, will be essential to make this possible.
The need to access high-demand skills training will require the design of ad-hoc courses and materials in near real-time. The integration of artificial intelligence and machine learning to generate educational content with virtual reality technologies that allow for more immersive experiences will be the order of the day.
Learning by doing will be accessible to any student at any time thanks to educational metaverses. In them, teachers will be able to guide and correct students as if they shared the same physical classroom. This is a particularly important factor in the case of continuing professional training.
There are already platforms that allow educators and students to create their own virtual reality experiences or templates on which teachers can plan their classes in the metaverse. In other words: the technology is already available. All that remains is for us to take advantage of it to build our education for life.
