Like few other professions, educators have always been experimenters. That’s not going away in 2018; if anything, it’s accelerating.
Socrates taught in a variety of forums that wouldn’t fit today’s definition of the classroom. Often in schoolhouses they helped build, pioneer schoolmarms taught lessons of their own design to America’s frontier generations. Down the street today, a sixth grader is chatting via Skype with a tutor on another continent.
Distance learning might be a relative newcomer to the education market, but consider how quickly it has grown. Compare the mail correspondence courses of 10 years ago to VIPKID, a global teaching service that enjoys a valuation of $1.5 billion and brings in about $60 million per month.
Online learning isn’t the only feature of today’s education landscape that might flabbergast Greek philosophers. Think augmented reality. Virtual reality. Coding courses for every student — a favorite cause of Apple CEO Timothy Cook.
After watching it track across the horizon for years, the education industry is at a digital crossroads. At a time when a traditional college education has never been more expensive, online courses have never been more popular, with 14 consecutive years of enrollment growth. At a time when two-thirds of teachers say they’re stressed out — almost twice the rate of the general working population — entrepreneurs are pumping out digitally native lessons and courseware such as LearnZillion to ease their burden.
In 2018, the education market is set for digital disruption like never before. We see seven trends shaping up that will collectively change how students learn and teachers teach…
