What my daughter taught me about education

When my daughter turned 13, I learned that she speaks a completely different language than me—her father, the MIT Professor. It is a digital language with two sounds, a grunt and a silence. I call it “teenlish.” I now find that she and I communicate best over text. Her responses are more immediate and we connect instantly, and her sentences can run into a few words, a departure from our vocal interactions. The new electronic intimacy is a phenomenon that has arrived with the maturation of the millennial generation and it’s changing the way that people interact all across the world.

This realization from my daughter, as well as my experiences as an MIT professor, have taught me that the world of education must catch up with its students’ changing needs; embracing technology and the millennial generation’s natural predilections. In the 1700s, parents lectured their children at home. A century later, one-room schoolhouses were born and teachers began lecturing their students.

Today, despite all of the world’s life-altering technologies, we are still largely using the one-way lecture style, and lecture halls can be thousands of students strong. Sure, the classroom has evolved by introducing textbooks, projectors, clickers, and even tablets, but the way we educators interact with these digitally-advanced students has evolved at a very slow pace. It’s clear that we must adapt to how students interact with technology. Simply handing someone a tablet isn’t enough.

With the rise of MOOC learning, there are more options that allow students to learn wherever they are, utilizing a computer and an Internet connection. And with these new opportunities, we can build untold flexibility into education—finally evolving from the traditional model into something more fluid, global, immediate, inclusive, adaptive, and scalable. The new model will open doors for learners who, until now, had previously been shut out. After all, when you have the opportunity to teach people all across the world, why must we limit ourselves by classroom size?

This flexibility creates great potential for us to unbundle higher education. We can unbundle the time it takes to get a degree by creating more flexible options—perhaps a freshman year taught online, then two years on-campus, and a final year out in the workforce or spent completing an independent online study. Unbundling can truly transform the way we approach education, and ensure that each and every student has the tailored educational experience he or she wants. But to make it work effectively, we need to open up new channels through college admissions.

When it comes to higher education, the admissions process has adhered to the same relative process for the better part of a century – based on grades, standardized testing, interviews, and extracurricular activities. For most, this system offers a consistent measure of data, so it’s not hard to understand why it has endured.

For other students, however, this process presents an insurmountable challenge that has been inadequately addressed over the years. What about students who are bright, but do not test well? What about learners who cannot afford coaching fees for standardized tests? Or those that can make the grades but do not have the resources to quit working and still pay for school? Or, for those who want to go to an American school but are half a world away?

Thankfully, the education world is beginning to address these obstructions. Over the years, some schools have been experimenting with a wider variety of criteria for which students can be admitted. There are schools, like New York University, that do not require standardized tests like SATs for admission. This is an incredible advantage for students who perform well in classes but poorly on standardized tests. Many schools offer financial aid, and Stanford University just announced an important change to their policy of admittance for students whose homes are under a certain income level. President Obama even proposed that we make two years of community college free for American students.

Flexibility in admission policies and financial aid packages open the door for students who would otherwise not have the opportunity to pursue higher education. Students can take AP-level courses online and then take the CollegeBoard exams that will apply toward their freshman year. They can also take college-level classes and prepare themselves for the workload to come.

Credit, of course, is still king. MOOC learning offers many opportunities for personal growth and fulfillment, but the opportunity to take rigorous open online courses for credit will open doors for many more people. And now, students are able to apply successful open online learning on the edX platform to on-campus course credit. That’s the goal of the Global Freshman Academy, edX’s new partnership with Arizona State University, for example.

The move towards credit-bearing opportunities creates a new flexibility that has not been seen before in higher education. Students who might otherwise not have a chance to attend college gain another entry point they previously did not have. They can take online courses and pay for that credit only if they are successful. The credit, when accumulated, can amount to an entire freshman year. In what we hope will build upon the model set by the new partnership of edX with Arizona State University, other universities will also begin to offer credit for open online learning.

The result will be an open college admittance option that does not require standardized testing, will allow students the flexibility to work full-time or care for their families, and study from anywhere in the world—all while receiving credit for their freshman year classes. With this new, aptitude-based system the geographic, time-based, and testing barriers come down: if the student can do the work, they get the credit.

As with all other technological advancements of our time, the future of education will largely be about flexibility and adapting to the changing needs of students. No two people are alike and no two learning paths are exactly the same.

Just as my daughter has taught me that there are other ways we can communicate effectively, so too are modern students teaching educators how we can improve access to learning. We should offer as many opportunities for learning as we can, and the more entrances we can open to higher education, the better we can make the world as a whole.

What changes do you think should be made to make education more accessible?