Beyond 2024: The future of learning and innovation

We’re already seeing the emergence of sophisticated AI tutor tools for asynchronous and self-led learning, and AI assistants for human tutors to customise and individualise their learning material, quizzes, and create supplementary material to improve learning outcomes for their students. The next leap forward on this front is going to be when these tools become sophisticated enough to reorient themselves seamlessly using millions of data points to adapt to a child’s learning needs using real-time data. Almost like a constant learning partner that doesn’t just respond, but challenges a student to think beyond what they’ve currently thought of.

One of the biggest worries when it comes to AI in learning is some voices dominating the collective narrative because some communities, cultures and geographies enjoy far more access than others. But in the age of the new internet, where technology is immersive and unrestricted by language, devices are lighter with more intuitive and inclusive user experiences, and, most importantly, networks are faster, more reliable, and only getting better, machine learning will be supported with unprecedentedly large and diverse data sets. All of this means a constantly shifting informational landscape that the children of today will be growing up in, which will require constant innovation in learning.

AI will bring the learning world closer, helping the formation of global communities of learners not restricted by language constraints, and accessible even by neurodivergent students with special learning needs. We are not too far away from a time when learning technology is sophisticated enough to understand what neural pathways and neurochemicals a particular learning experience is activating in a child, and reorients itself to create an environment most beneficial to the learner.

Nano, or micro, or learning through simplified, bite-sized content that can be consumed on the go is already a standard practice within learning and development of employees in fast-paced work environments. It’s an idea that is also gaining momentum within pedagogical learning, given that the way kids consume content has seen a sea change due to social media platforms. Educational psychologists have already established that kids as young as three years old are capable of retaining a lot more information than they were previously believed to – almost as much as teens with far fewer neural connections – when they are exposed to the information repeatedly and in simplified formats.

As content becomes customised, multi-format, and multi-channel, with the ability to blend the real and virtual worlds to engage all senses at scale, I believe nano-learning will become a norm in K12 and co-curricular education.

There was a time when mastering a skill or retention of information was the ultimate goal of learning. And so, we had a very precise definition for what constituted learning achievement, what the desired outcomes were. Consequently, our way of assessing this fixed idea of achievement was, largely, standardised testing. But we no longer live in that world. We have lightning-fast networks that allow for instant access to information and cloud computing. We’ve already seen above how crowd-sourcing of data will result in dynamic informational landscapes.

All of these make retention and mastery obsolete as learning goals. What our kids will need to engage with are the larger questions that bloom in their future – the ethics of using the unprecedented power that AI will make available to them. What the global economy might look like in the age of automation, and especially how it will impact the labour-intensive development. What new global policies the world will have to build consensus for in the coming years to protect its most vulnerable. Children’s education in every discipline will see a shift towards preparing them for these questions and define achievement as their readiness to be able to navigate unpredictable futures.

This article is authored by Ravi Bhushan, founder & CEO, BrightCHAMPS.