Human Learning: Becoming Future Ready

It’s been a productive period of almost three decades, that he's spent as the CEO of this technology company. He’s reached this position through sheer dint of hard work, having worked himself up through the ranks over the years. Along the way, he’s picked up some important skills, consistently reached targets, juggled various roles of being a communicator and executioner, made friends, doused office fires, and built employee morale. He always believed that once he reached the top, life would be easier and more peaceful, without much struggle of driving the company into the future. The onset of Covid put paid to all his dreams and took him back to ground zero. Suddenly from being someone who was at the top of his game and having achieved much in life, he has to begin his professional life from scratch. His expertise gives him leverage in small companies, but his experience doesn’t make him the perfect fit for the job.

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This scene and so many like these may sound familiar to us. We’re watching as close friends and family are being left redundant and out of work, struggling to catch up with this sudden transformation in the way life is lived and will pan out. Those who've learned and applied their learning to immediate tasks at hand and further their career will find themselves at a loss in the way ahead. Those who've been flexible and agile and have learned to imbine learning from everywhere, will be able to adapt and forge their way ahead.

Considering learning a distinctive part of our inherent genetic makeup, and leveraging this crisis to pivot or change tracks and fit into changing scenarios is very possible even today. However learning confined to a set of tools and technology or subjects, restricts how much we as humans can grasp and assimilate, making us more rigid and inflexible.

THE EVOLUTION OF HUMAN LEARNING

Human learning is evolutionary, as we’ve observed. It’s a basic human trait, of grasping information from the surroundings and processing it for further action. Learning through the centuries has transformed and grown to become more personalized, direct, and democratized. It is crucial to understand where we are heading towards in the course of learning, and what is to become of it. Restricting learning to education imparted in schools is a very one-sided perspective, one that limits our growth and understanding. Looked at in a broader scope, it has continued unhindered and will continue to do so, provided we are able to engage tools and technology that disseminates its spread.

When considered as a whole, learning is a complex interplay of psychology, sociology, and semantics. This happens every time, every day and everywhere we go, while we observe and listen, speak, and share. That which we assimilate is converted into information bytes, saved within us for future use. It is this that has been passed on through language, written texts and communication from one generation to another.

In the last article we discussed human learning, how digital tools have furthered the dissemination of this learning and communication as we see it today. Human learning has also affected our complex behavioral patterns and technology has an even larger role to play.

Learning is incremental, occurs in bits and pieces and all these changes may not be seen by us in this one lifetime. While the world constantly changes and grows, our behaviour is changing too as a by-product of our learning. What makes sense to us, simplifies our life, and what still needs change compels us to seek improvement. In a broad sense technology is a pathway in our larger goal of seeking improvement. The first computer that was built wasn’t open to general use but built specifically for the military. It is only once its efficacy was proved, that people began to adopt it for other non-official uses. Similarly the internet and myriad other inventions and discoveries. Technology and other tools, were therefore byproducts of basic human learning. Development in technology has led to further understanding of the human brain, and this is further laying the groundwork for more learning. This complex cycle is sustained and propelled by our continuous change in behaviour.

Behaviour is therefore an interplay of actions, cognition, and emotions. Because behaviour is a manifestation of self-learning and feeds off it itself, technology will only help accelerate behaviour even more.

HOW WILL THIS IMPACT OUR FUTURE?

• Human Learning Will Become Collaborative - With behavioural patterns displaying minor variations across the human spectrum and tech being the unifying thread, we will continue learning from each other as opposed to learning from a figurehead such as a teacher. Single points of learning will become redundant. Rather, learning will become self-organizing and uniform. Technology will amplify social collaboration with today’s tools like internet video services, and video conferencing and tomorrow's Virtual (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR). Virtual spaces will become the new schools and learning more effective. Alex Wexelblat proposes in his book 'Virtual Reality Applications and Explorations', about “The ability to exchange or share points of view literally, in multiple-participant virtual worlds may intensify [the] social learning experience. Co-creating virtual worlds for learning allows teachers and students to use computers in a cooperative group situation, where learners tend to be more productive.”
• Artificial Intelligence Won't Allow Learning To Stagnate - Despite behaviours changing radically and therefore the means for technology to replace humans, intellectual tedium that seeps in will further the need for more discoveries and inventions. Humans will, therefore, move away from physical tasks and instead focus on intellectual tasks. Behavior will no longer be repetitive but become unique, derived from our predecessors. Artificial Intelligence is already changing the way every human action becomes purposeful, taking away redundant jobs from our hands. Specialized tools will eliminate processes and behaviors that might be unnecessary or will need much effort. As Dr. Beverly Park Woolf, University of Massachusetts professor says, “AI could be instrumental in delivering high-quality learning opportunities for people all over the world. It can help connect learners to mentors, train people for effective 21st-century soft and hard skills, support learning with analytics, and provide universal access to students even from the poorest or most remote classrooms.”
• Learning Will Become Personalized - Learning today is a continuation of our industrial designed model, and that's why usually referred to as a ‘factory line’. While individuals are different, learning is delivered to us all similarly without accounting our differences. Behavior coming out of this has also pegged us into boxes without considering our unique traits, creativity, understanding and cognitive absorption. Re-tuning education to foster creativity will mandate learning becoming personal. This is where technology will make a big difference. ‘Recursive learning’ will enable materials and processes to be fine-tuned to adapt to different personalities and behavioral types on the go.

Learning and in turn, human behavior has always been on a trajectory of change and growth. What differentiates this learning from all that happened centuries ago, is the disruption in such a short span of time. Technology and gadgets like the mobile phone, will ensure learning and behavior become more precise, purposeful, and powerful which will greatly impact the way humans feel, see, grasp, and observe the world.

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Co-authoring this piece with Charmaine Kenita, on my learnings in education, technology, future challenges, and mapping the way forward.