AI-generated summary
Each year, over 650 global experts from the Future Trends Forum identify key trends shaping the coming year. In the realm of education, a growing consensus emphasizes lifelong learning—continuous acquisition of both technical (“hard”) and interpersonal (“soft”) skills—driven by digitalization, new communication methods, and emerging professions.
The Forum highlights five major trends shaping the future of education. First, integrating climate change education is crucial, demanding a cultural shift and new pedagogical approaches that incorporate behavioral science and social action. Second, the COVID-19 pandemic exposed the digital divide, prompting calls for public-private partnerships and flexible hybrid teaching models that blend online and face-to-face learning, potentially transforming university campuses into hubs for ongoing, intergenerational education. Third, technological innovations like AI, IoT, cloud computing, blockchain, and augmented reality are set to revolutionize learning methods. Fourth, Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are rapidly expanding, offering more inclusive education through platforms such as EdX, founded by Harvard and MIT. Lastly, education must evolve to prepare today’s students for a post-digital future where digital and physical realities merge, raising critical questions about curriculum design and timing to equip future leaders effectively.
Throughout the year, these trends will continue to develop, showcased through practical examples and case studies.
The Education of the future, together with the design of the post-pandemic world and Tech for Good, are the priority innovation areas in 2021 for the world experts of the first Spanish innovation think tank.
As every year, the more than 650 global experts from our think tank Future Trends Forum, tell us what the trends to take into account for the coming year will be.
Regarding the Education of the future, there are more and more voices of experts who are committed to the so-called lifelong learning. Digitalisation, which has reached so many areas of our lives, the new ways of communicating and collaborating, not only with each other but also with machines and computer programmes, and the new professions that are emerging, require permanent education which, as its name suggests, means training throughout life in new skills and abilities. both “hard” and “soft“.
Around this permanent education, the experts of the Future Trends Forum point out the following trends:
1.- Education on climate change. If we want to solve climate change, a radical change in cultural values is needed. Many questions arise from the answers that will lead to far-reaching societal innovations: what, how, and when should children (and adults) be taught about climate change? How can social action be included in the curriculum, how should issues such as civil disobedience be addressed? What does psychology and neuroscience say about how learning about climate change can change behavior? How can this knowledge be included in schools, universities and public education?
2.- The future of education in times of virtual classrooms. The COVID-19 pandemic is highlighting the consequences of the digital divide. The ability of many citizens to continue working, learning and playing is being impeded by their limited access to and understanding of how to use technology. Public-private partnership programmes must emerge to bridge the digital divide. In addition, new hybrid (face-to-face-online) and malleable teaching models (from 100% face-to-face to 100% online, depending on the specific needs of students and teachers) will emerge. This will also lead to a rethinking of the uses of university campuses, which could become spaces for intergenerational, multidisciplinary coexistence, more focused on the permanent education we were talking about.
3.- Innovation in education. How can we innovate in education? Technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, Internet of Things (IoT), Could Computing, Blockchain and Augmented Reality, promise to revolutionize the way we learn and train ourselves.
4.- Large-scale open online courses. The market for Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) will grow at a rate of between 40 and 50% per year over the decade. What type of training will be more likely to go through this means? Who will be the big players? Initiatives such as EdX, the MOOC provider created jointly by Harvard University and MIT, promise a more inclusive and universal education.
5.- Today’s education for tomorrow. We must prepare the students we have in school today for what is to come tomorrow. It is necessary to rethink and redesign subjects so that today’s young people are prepared to live in the world that the experts of the Future Trends Forum foresee: a world of post-digital innovations where the digital and the physical are so intimately intertwined that it will change the way we live, relate to each other, and also learn. It is these young people who will lead the change in a few years. The question to be solved is: who should learn what, when, and how, today, to be prepared for what experts predict in the future?
Throughout the year that is now starting, we will see the evolution of these and other innovative trends, illustrating it with examples and use cases.
