Education 4.0

It's very important to adopt the concept of Education 4.0 in the Management Institute.

During the research on how to adapt the concept, I find answers to very basic but very important questions:

1)?What is the basic purpose of education and training?

The basic purpose of education and training is to empower an individual to lead a successful life and contribute best for him, his family, society, and nation and to humanity. Therefore training is the most effective tool to achieve this outcome.

2)?What is the main asset of any nation?

Since youth are the main asset of any nation, education becomes the most powerful tool for social transformation. India's demographic structure is changing, while the world grows older, the Indian population is becoming younger and by 2025 about two-thirds of Indians will be in its workforce. A continuously growing older world offers a huge opportunity for talented and competent.

3)?Does the entire system needs to be transformed?

Our current system of education comes from the Prussian system which was designed to create good employees and an obedient workforce, who blindly follow orders and always need to be instructed. This system was not designed to teach students to think. It strikes three more questions in our minds.

• Whether our higher education is “relevant to the era”?
• Why should a student pay for education, when he cannot earn his livelihood after getting his “Degree”?
• Why should a student attend classes, when more updated knowledge is available to him via outside resources?

The answer to the above three questions is not encouraging and positive. We don’t want to be a ‘degree producing factory’ like approx. 904 universities and more than 47,000 colleges are operating in India, not bothering about the employability of their students, even as the country tries to keep pace with the fast-paced information revolution, especially when the world recognizes those equipped with relevant knowledge and technologies, and competencies and skills to apply them.?We find most of our universities are not exactly the sources of great ideas, innovation, and entrepreneurial activities whereas, in other countries, universities and colleges are great sources of new ideas and innovations. With entrepreneurship emerging as a preferred choice, the education system must have enabling provisions in its syllabus to encourage the development of the entrepreneurial mindset.??

4)?What is the future of jobs?

The World Economic Forum @ Davos-2016 announced the Fourth Industrial Revolution, and predicted a 'major shift about the future of jobs'. Disruptive technologies, driven by Industry 4.0 have begun adding more fire to the already volatile, uncertain, complex & ambiguous world and impacting our lives, our relationships, also the future of our jobs. ?

The technological breakthrough is rapidly shifting the frontiers between the work task performed by humans and those performed by machines. In 2018, an average of 71% of the total task was performed by humans in industries across 12 selected sectors; but by 2022 it is expected to reduce to just 58%.

Therefore, increasingly more jobs are likely to be taken over by machines. However, not all is gloomy - a new set of jobs is expected to emerge where Human skills and EQ will be most important and valued. As machine intelligence rises, education needs to produce better human competence to drive MI and AI.

Industry 4.0 is defined by Connected Cyber-physical systems, powered by IoT and fueled by data, creating a fully interconnected society.

In such a hyper-connected disruptive world, Education has no option but to adapt to these changes in Industry which are brought about by disruptive technologies.?The solution is an implementation of Education 4.0.

Since Education 4.0 denotes changes, relevant to Industry 4.0, we find Lectures and Memorization (Education 1.0), Internet Enabled Learning (Education 2.0), and Knowledge-based education (Education 3.0) are not enough. It’s time to focus on Innovation based education (Education 4.0).

What is Education 4.0?

Education 4.0 is a purposeful approach to learning that lines up with the fourth industrial revolution and is about transforming the future of education using advanced technology and automation.

Creativity is the foundation of Education 4.0. It emphasizes the need to prepare students to take on challenges, head-on.

Education 4.0 will require gradual paradigm shifts:

• Demand-led instead of supply-led education
• Competency-based instead of knowledge-based
• Lifelong learning instead of front-loaded learning
• Modular Degree instead of one-shot going
• Emphasis on EQ than IQ alone

To keep up with the change, one has to revisit the traditional educational paradigms with a futuristic approach. Students should be adept with skills set by the fast-changing technology; they should be led, but not instructed; information should be made accessible, but not fed to them.

Both general and vocational education should aim at making students skill-ready to compete with the outside labor force.

Major trends of Education 4.0

1) A more personalized learning

Education 4.0 will also enable personalized learning for students depending on their capabilities. This means that above-average students will be challenged with tasks that are difficult as compared to students who are below average. This implies that there will be individual learning processes for each student. It will surely have a positive impact as it will enable students to learn at their pace. This will result in a better understanding of the concepts and an overall better result. It will also help teachers to identify the strengths and weaknesses of each student individually and guide them accordingly.

2)?Accelerate remote learning opportunities

The cornerstone of Education 4.0 is making learning available anywhere, anytime with the set of eLearning tools that promote remote and self-paced learning. The Active Blended Learning (ABL) concept is picking up, where students get to be actively involved in learning beyond classrooms. This way, they end up mastering both practical and experiential learning.

3)????Choice of education tools

A part of Education 4.0 will be the technology/devices used by students to gain an education. While every subject has its own set of knowledge and information that the students can grasp, the road to attaining this knowledge can vary. This means that the students will be able to choose the tools and techniques through which they want to acquire this knowledge. Techniques like blended learning, BYOD (Bring Your Own Device), and flipped classrooms are a few examples of this.

4)????Data Analysis

There are greater insights into the students learning journey with data analytics and reporting in Education 4.0. The statistical analysis allows teaching staff to learn where students exactly stand and guide them appropriately.

5)????Project-based learning

The project-driven approach that Education 4.0 supports helps students learn in a fun and interesting way! It shuns theoretical knowledge and prompts students to learn time management skills, organizational skills, collaborative skills, and time management skills, much needed for their employment for the road ahead.

6)????Field-specific experience

As technology integration in specific domains facilitates more efficiency; the education curriculum will now accommodate more skills that require human knowledge and personal interaction. This will result in more emphasis on imparting field-specific knowledge to the students within the existing courses. This means that schools will now provide more opportunities for students to obtain real-world skills relevant to the prospecting job opportunities. Thus, the school curriculum will now include enhanced subject knowledge that can help students with their future internships, projects etcetera.

7)????Easy and Accurate Exam pattern

A more practical way of assessment comes into place with Education 4.0. There are both online and offline assessments and students get assessed on projects, assignments, and fieldwork.

I believe that the effect of Industry Revolution 4.0 has had on Education can never be ignored.

With education 4.0, we started cultivating a peer-to-peer learning atmosphere with students being able to learn collaboratively and from each other.

• The role of teachers is that of facilitators.
• The curriculum and learning outcomes focus on complex 21st-century skills including problem-solving, critical thinking, creativity, people management, teamwork and collaboration, emotional intelligence, judgment and decision-making, service orientation, negotiation, and cognitive flexibility.

How can Management College need to prepare students for Education 4.0?

The only way is by aligning industry requirements with education. Here are a few ways by which the same could be achieved;

• Remodeling of Curriculum with special stress on futuristic subjects. With digitization and automation, a skill-based curriculum is the order of the day. Employers are running short of a skilled workforce and bank on universities and educational institutions to upskill the present workforce.
• Building digital skills. Institutions should have modern workplace skills and focus on training their faculty to build digital skills to develop fully able students for their workplace. Soft skills should be made indispensable with a mix of problem-solving, social skills, and process skills.

?Top 10 Digital Skills Education 4.0 demands:

1. Complex Problem Solving
2. Critical Thinking
3. Creativity
4. People Management
5. Coordinating with Others
6. Emotional Intelligence
7. Judgment & Decision Making
8. Service Orientation
9. Negotiation
10. Cognitive Flexibility

• Opt for digital tools for virtual learning (face-to-face) environments (VLEs).

This is picking up across the world where students and faculty gain remote access to teaching through LMS. Learning and teaching, accessing course content, online chat facilities, discussions, collaborations, peer teaching, and blended learning, all happen in flexible hours.

• Tweaking of course delivery.

There should be a synchronization between the Faculty and the curriculum taught. Faculty should be open to using technological applications to improve students’

cognitive learning abilities. They should adapt to personalized adaptive learning techniques for a smarter learning approach to make the whole process fun and interesting.

A robust professional framework with career planning inter disciplines should be included. This aspect will futurize Indian education for building a workforce for Enterprise 4.0.

• Technology-built classrooms.

To be initiated across universities, colleges, and higher education institutions to deliver successful graduates for the cyber-physical systems prevalent across all industries.

This means building a technology-rich curriculum, and transforming the learning approach, to better the student experience.

Conclusion

Education 4.0 focuses on modern and smart technology, AI, and robotics, all of which influence our everyday lives. Hence Management Institutes need to gear up to this massive transformation of bringing technology-driven design into the curricula with the assistance of educationists and other visionaries. Giving today’s workforce the right tools will help create a more multifaceted society where everyone plays their part well, adding to a self-sustainable model of education.

Management Institutes have to value the power digital technology has on transforming education and we are here to help you watch your step in every way possible. We know that the future of higher education is uncertain and complex. But at NBS Campus we will unwind it for you.

Institutes have to develop tools to provide 24/7 virtual learning, platforms to offer personalized learning and to easily connect with faculty and other students, tools to develop curriculum the way you prefer, admit, and enroll students, conduct assessments online, etc.