How Modular Education Is Revolutionizing The Way We Learn (And Work)

In today’s digital economy, rapid technological change is transforming the workplace, and it has become apparent that we can no longer stop our education after college if we are to stay relevant. We will need to be continually learning, refreshing and updating our skillset as we progress through our careers. This drastic change in the nature of work also means that the way in which we learn needs to similarly transform.

But how can we be prepared for jobs of the future that will require a hybrid, evolving set of skills from a variety of subject areas, when traditionally we spend four years studying one subject and often don’t return to college once we graduate? Your field could transform several times over as your career progresses; just think about how much journalism or marketing has changed in the last 10-15 years.  Recognizing that we need to expand the options for students to gain an education, higher education institutions are starting to innovate, creating new ways to unbundle degrees and create non-linear, modular career and education pathways.

Modular education partitions degrees into smaller, Lego-like building blocks of learning, each with their own credentials, learning and skills outcomes. This kind of modular content will benefit students and employees by allowing them to tailor their education background to better position them for job prospects and career mobility. Modular learning also enables lifelong learning because working professionals are able to learn new skills in shorter amounts of time, even while they work. They will be able to combine humanities skills with tech skills, communication skills with coding skills, analytical skills with design skills. Students will essentially be able to synthesize their own education with the customized skill set they need to advance their careers, making for a truly unique job candidate. Hiring companies will also have clearer insights into the skill set that a potential candidate has, as the modular credentials  of their education will call out the types of skills the candidate has acquired.

Higher ed institutions are using massive open online courses (MOOCs) as one of the vehicles on which to deliver these modular degrees and credentials. The latest teaching and learning research shows that learning online often results in similar or better outcomes than the traditional classroom setting because of its flexibility, personalized pacing and instant feedback, all based on the latest in cognitive science learning. Plus, using technology to enable  high-quality education at scale provides universities an increasingly promising option to bend the cost curve of education.

The transforming higher education landscape reflects the changing nature of the future of work. The fastest-growing fields often lie at the intersection of two seemingly unrelated professions— for example, data science is one of the fastest growing fields, but a data scientist often also needs a strong working background in the industry in which they are embedded. This requires a unique hybrid skill set that can be a challenge to teach in a traditional education setting. But in the near future, a student could build a custom degree that fuses modular data science components from one university, and finance, biotech, marketing, or manufacturing from another. Additionally an employee could augment their education with a specialized credential or portion of a degree to better position themselves for data science jobs.

The biggest lesson to take forward about the transforming workplace is that learning and knowledge-sharing will be a continuous, lifelong experience. Education isn’t static. The skills needed to succeed are changing faster than ever, and workers will need to continually learn and refresh their skills in order to stay relevant. The innovations of modular education are a solution to this problem.

This article was originally published on Forbes.com.