Historically, there have been many factors that prevent people from
undertaking the crucial training and education courses they need, many of which
go beyond their previous qualifications and financial status. Many people are
in circumstances that make traditional training and university experiences
nearly impossible, such as raising a child or living too far from a campus.
With the advent of webinars, digital training, and long distance
education courses such as those provided by the Open University, the internet
has allowed for the traditional barriers that prevent people from gaining
qualifications to be severely reduced. But still, the greater need for
innovation in education is currently not being addressed as it should be.
One of the main problems faced by digital training providers is the lack
of centralised control. As such, and unlike other technology based service
providers, there is often very little oversight of content or implementation.
Digital training and education providers argue that both they, and the people
that they teach, benefit from maintaining an open network style collective that
favours a digitalized educational experience.
New digital solutions for learning and development have mostly benefited larger organisations; in terms of business, companies that have
large numbers of staff to train can benefit from cloud based teaching
solutions, which are implemented by senior members of staff through training
management software. I believe this is where digital based training
services succeed most, and by providing a more open and collaborative
environment for people to learn and share ideas, we can work towards
implementing these ideals within traditional education.
Researchers have previously studied ways to enhance digital training
services, usually coming to the conclusion that empowering education providers
with digital tools, as well as allowing them to pool their teaching services and
assets will help provide better teaching for larger groups of disadvantaged
people. This helps overcome the barriers that prevent underdeveloped regions
attain an effective level of education. This research has been undertaken by Digital
Promise, a US based non-profit which develops cost effective
ways to improve education through technology and research.
It can be concluded then, especially within the UK, that not enough is
being committed to developing digital based teaching and training. I believe
the reliance on traditional forms of training and learning will harm our
students in the long run, simply by not empowering them in the way that digital
based services could be.
I have previously written about how it should be mandatory for every child
to learn
how to code at a basic level. This is because it’s essential to
the future development of the UK’s output of skills and its economy. The inclusion
of innovative technology based education services will greatly benefit young
people and children at school, and this is the same inclusion we should be
giving to adult learners, such as those in crucial career training programmes
or full-time adult education, because as I said previously, the benefits it
provides to a person who is otherwise unable to train or learn is immensely
valuable.
Technologies have also been valuable to measuring the progress and effectiveness
of education in developing nations. In India, the Department of Education
alongside the United Nations developed the Digital
Gender Atlas, which is a soon-to-be widely implemented software
aimed at identifying geographic regions in need of more educational support for
women and young girls. Support such as this also encourages and enables
valuable feedback from the students which it helps, which in turn improves the
technologies further.
These innovations should not only focus on the Western world, but also
focus on implementation on a global scale, and by embracing these innovations
we can make our education and training programmes much more effective, spurring
on a generation of learners inspired by digital based development.
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