Christian Long: Imagining tertiary education in 2025 from EDtalks on Vimeo.

For a long time people have forecast the end of teaching as we know it – but surely we are entering an era where options will morph into something other than the known, something better, something more open and flexible?

In this short film, Christian Long raises a number of questions including:

                                              What are the options tertiary students will face in 2025?

                                              What will it mean to go to school?

He raises some questions that are unanswerable at this present time, but which will affect students currently at school, and for whom we are still providing something more like the experience of our medieval forebears,rather than the agility that the connected world provides.

He reminds us that it is hard to measure the return on investment for attending a tertiary institution now, let alone into the future, even if that is as close as his chosen time frame of eight years.

He challenges tertiary institutions to think about what they are and what they should be; university campus planning should allow for more agile uses, including partnering with other organisations. “Place” will be less bricks and mortar, rather than something that will form part of a fabric of choices ranging from face to face, several days immersion, virtual attendance, flexible spaces and incubators. Just in time learning at scale rather than a set time-frame resulting in a specific degree; adding up to an ongoing and learner driven life long education.

Our schools would do well to be thinking along similar lines.

References

Long, C.  (2012). Imagining Tertiary education in 2025 [Motion Picture]. Retrieved July 5, 2017, from https://vimeo.com/50512142