We are getting to a tipping point where the convergence of Artificial Intelligence and Immersive Technologies will transform the way we teach and learn beyond recognition. What does this mean for educators, and the rest of us?

“It seems to me that it is through this machine that for the first time we will be able to have a one-to-one relationship between information source and information consumer.”

These are the eerily prophetic words of the late Science Fiction author and futurist visionary Isaac Asimov, long before Google became a part of our lexicon.

“In the old days people would hire a tutor for their children and they’d adapt their teaching to the tastes and abilities of their students. But how many people could afford to hire a pedagogue? Most children went uneducated, and the only way to educate the masses was to have one teacher for a great many students, and to organize this they followed a curriculum. So we either had a one-to-one relationship for the few or a one-to-many relationship for the many, but now, there’s a possibility of a one-to-one relationship for the many. Everyone can have a teacher in the form of the gathered knowledge of the human species.”

Asimov’s tantalizing promise of scaling one-to-one instruction would, quite literally, give students the best of all worlds.

Now let’s take this one step further, and imagine teaching a class with hundreds of students, yet being able to pay perfect attention to each one, detecting the slightest hint of confusion and projecting the appropriate reaction accordingly. This would give teachers super-powers they could not dream of leveraging in normal classroom environment.

Imagine teaching a class with hundreds of students, yet being able to pay perfect attention to each one, detecting the slightest hint of confusion and projecting the appropriate reaction accordingly
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That scenario might actually be much closer than we might think, with the advent of immersive technologies that integrate with Artificial Intelligence (AI). Since Virtual Reality (VR) relies on motion capture to work, it already has the inbuilt mechanisms capable of capturing and interpreting body language to create a “digital footprint” of each user.

The next step then is to use AI and machine learning to “teach” systems to filter, adapt and personalize interactions accordingly. It would be the ultimate fulfilment of Asimov’s vision, and something that leading academics in this space have long predicted.

“VR is the most psychologically powerful medium in history,” says Jeremy Bailenson, Communications Professor at Stanford University. In his recently published book Experience on Demand, Bailenson recounts how, although he’s been studying VR and its practical applications since the 1990’s, he is often taken aback by how much more impactful it is compared to other media, particularly where it is applied to learning, which led him to confidently assert that “almost any skill can be improved by virtual instruction.”

In his study of transformed social interaction Bailenson investigated how this could work in practice: “Unlike telephone conversations and video-conferences, interactants in virtual environments have the ability to systematically filter the physical appearance and behavioral actions of their avatars in the eyes of their conversational partners, amplifying or suppressing features and nonverbal signals in real time for strategic purposes. These transformations can have a drastic impact on interactants’ persuasive and instructional abilities.” In other words, the amount of engagement that a teacher’s avatar had with its virtual students had demonstrable impact on their engagement – and in their learning.

When VR becomes more accessible and affordable, distance learning could be the medium’s most important use case
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The reason which makes VR such an effective and impactful learning tool is that it allows learners to achieve what is known as psychological presence. This essentially means that when we enter a virtual environment, we believe we are present, in spite of our conscious brains telling us that this is indeed a simulation. An important element in achieving such psychological presence is the concept of embodied cognition, which tells us that people absorb information better when performing actions themselves – rather than watching others do so or hearing/reading about them.

“Embodied cognition acknowledges that the mind and body are agents working together to make meaning of our experiences. It’s the idea that our mind alone does not dictate our worldview but instead that our cognition is shaped by the relationship between our mind and our body to inform and navigate our world, make meaning from our environments, and ultimately to result in learning,” explains educational and developmental psychologist Lindsay Portnoy.

Emerging research on VR indicate that the environment is a powerful tool from which we can create meaningful experiences that can effect great changes in our ability to perceive and understand the world around us. One study demonstrated that immersive VR provides better learning of physical movements than a two-dimensional video, and researchers from the University of Chicago found that simple gesturing in elementary students could potentially change and improve their knowledge. Current research by Disney, on the other hand, shows how VR is fast becoming seamless enough to enable it to replicate and synchronize with physical world behaviours such as catching a ball.

The reason which makes VR such an effective and impactful learning tool is that it allows learners to achieve psychological presence
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The advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning technology will enable such datasets to be leveraged in a responsive and contextual way. This combination of AI and immersive capabilities means that future learning environments will become increasingly personalized, adapting to the individual needs of each user in real-time by analysing their “digital footprint” data.

“I’m reminded of an article I read about a father who felt “super human” while using his Amazon Echo. He and his kids loved interacting with the speaker and found the ability to call Ubers, order pizza and play music to be truly empowering and immersive – it really felt like they were interacting with an actual person,” says Ryan Andal, president and co-founder at Secret Location, who says he’s felt the same “super human” effect while using VR: “When I imagine how many jobs will be lost through automation and AI, I’m encouraged by how VR can combine with AR to allow us to be ‘super human’ and decrease knowledge gaps, learning curves and barriers for collaboration. VR will essentially allow declining markets to rejuvenate much faster than normal because of how powerful it can be as an educational and training tool.”

Andal believes that when VR becomes more accessible and affordable, distance learning could be the medium’s most important use case, opening the doors to spreading education – in its broadest possible sense – into areas typically shut out from it.

“We often think of education in the traditional sense – children in a classroom – but I believe VR is best used for training and learning new skills or trades. In that sense, VR is a complete overhaul of what’s possible! It eliminates the need for expensive materials to practice on and can put students in an array of situations that cannot normally be simulated for training purposes. VR means students will get that coveted “real-life work” experience sooner than usual.”

We are, in fact, already seeing such practical training applications emerging in a broad range of areas. The U.S. alpine team recently turned to VR to allow American racers to memorize the hill and take hundreds of virtual runs down a fast, tricky course in preparation for the 2018 Winter Olympics. They are the first known Olympic team in the world to utilize virtual reality in their training.

Troy Taylor, high performance director for U.S. Ski and Snowboard Association, believes giving a racer the ability to experience the course in VR multiple times ahead of the games gives his team a crucial competitive advantage. STRIVR, the company which developed the simulation, has been working for many years with various sports outfits such as the NFL and NBA to improve athlete’s performance through virtual training. This has been so effective, in fact that some players reported having flashbacks to games they’d only experienced in VR.

Immersive Tech eliminates the need for expensive materials to practice on and can put students in an array of situations that cannot normally be simulated for training purposes
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Walmart is also leveraging this to train its employees following a successful pilot program last year. The company is also working with STRIVR to incorporate VR more widely in its training. The goal, STRIVR CEO Derek Belch told The Verge in a recent interview, is to put employees in scenarios that would be inconvenient to physically re-create — like dealing with spills, or preparing for a Black Friday shopping spree.

“We’re using computer vision to map scenes, so we literally know exactly where someone’s looking,” says Belch. “Wearers might look around an environment and find the spill, for example, then answer a multiple-choice question about what effect it could have on the store,” he explains.

The global EdTech industry is set to grow to an estimated $252 billion by 2020, and VR is expected to capture a large proportion of that booming market. The combination of ideological and commercial incentives will therefore likely lead to accelerated development of applications and capabilities that will empower teachers and learners like never before.

The Global Education and Skills Forum will be hosting an Immersive Learning Showcase and series of insightful discussions on the 17th and 18th March 2018
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Where the Internet has made great strides towards democratizing knowledge, VR will democratize experiences. Immersive technologies represent a revolution in the way we transmit knowledge and will shape how we learn and conduct business more collaboratively in a globalized, boundaryless world.

The global EdTech industry is set to grow to an estimated $252 billion by 2020, and VR is expected to capture a large proportion of that booming market
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The implications of this are profound according to Bailenson: “I firmly believe that for people who love to learn, the future is going to be filled with thrilling educational experiences,” he concludes.

For those interested in exploring the potential of Immersive Technologies in Learning, the Global Education and Skills Forum will be hosting an Immersive Learning Showcase and series of insightful discussions on the 17^th and 18^th March 2018. GESF 2018 is an initiative of the Varkey Foundation to improve standards of education for underprivileged children around the world.

Where the Internet has made great strides towards democratizing knowledge, VR will democratize experiences
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This article was originally published on ERP in News

Thanks for the mention! smartntx: RT @alicebonasio: Rise of the Virtual Super-Teacher https://t.co/kGj0kdX2At via @erpinnews

— ERPINNEWS (@erpinnews) March 12, 2018

For companies looking to get into Immersive technologies such as VR/AR/MR/XR our Virtual Reality Consultancy services offer guidance and support on how best to incorporate these into your brand strategy.

 

Alice Bonasio is a VR Consultant and Tech Trends’ Editor in Chief. She also regularly writes for Fast Company, Ars Technica, Quartz, Wired and others. Connect with her on LinkedIn and follow @alicebonasio on Twitter

The post How VR and AI Will Supercharge Learning appeared first on Tech Trends.

MOOCs are now mainstream, but online courses need to leverage new technologies if they are to truly democratise access to knowledge 

There’s little doubt that online courses are proving popular with students all over the world. Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) providers such as EdX and Futurelearn have been lauded with democratising higher education and making knowledge more accessible.

Coursera – which to date attracted over $210 million investment – has over 20 million registered learners who access courses from over 140 institutions worldwide, and most major universities – From Harvard to Imperial and Princeton – have jumped on the online learning bandwagon.

Take-up and offer of online courses in the UK has risen dramatically
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Research published by Ashton University and Keypath Education (who have just announced a partnership to deliver Masters degrees in Accounting, Finance and Management) show there has been a dramatic rise in both the offer and take-up of courses from major UK universities in the past year.

“We live in an increasingly global and technology-driven world, where online degrees are quickly becoming a natural option for students and universities alike,” agrees Professor Alex Cameron, Vice Chancellor of Aston University. “We have been able to attract a diverse and impressive student body to our online programmes, students who would otherwise not have been able to study at Aston.”

The growth in online degrees is also being powered by greater digital connectivity in emerging markets such as Nigeria as well as a demand for flexible working and learning in developed economies like the US, Hong Kong and Singapore.

Analysis of the latest data from the Higher Education Statistical Authority (HESA) revealed that since 2011 the numbers of American students studying at UK universities entirely via online degrees has increased by 26%, while Australian and South African numbers have soared a staggering 125% and 135% respectively.

“We are experiencing a global boom in the number of students studying online degrees, but with Brexit on the horizon, it is more important than ever that British institutions are taking the lead on innovation as we are in a very competitive race to attract the world’s best and brightest students to study with British Universities,” says Keypath Education CEO Rajay Naik.

Online learning is big business. While such courses are comparatively more affordable than their traditional campus-based counterparts, fees for Aston’s MBA and MSc programmes start at £11,050 for UK students and £16,050 for international students.

We are experiencing a global boom in the number of people studying online degrees
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With six intakes per year and no physical restrictions as to the number of students that can be admitted, it is easy to see why this is such an attractive booming market, specially in the global climate of increased competitiveness where academic qualifications can still make a huge difference to a person’s long-term earning prospects.

Most online course providers stopped offering free certification years ago, which reflects the real value that is now attached to online qualifications. The unfortunate consequence of this is that there is a rising problem of fake accreditation, where many online courses faced criticism for not offering sufficient identity checks to make sure people receiving course certification are the same ones who actually did the coursework.

Most online course providers stopped offering free certification years ago
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And while it is difficult to see the problem being completely eradicated – the “fake qualifications industry” was already worth over $1bn a decade ago before the popularisation of MOOCs ever became a phenomenon – there are significant moves being made in the industry to effectively address this.

One example is the recently announced partnership between VSF Global and Oxademy to offer online postgraduate and business management courses. VSF are experts in identification and security, being the world’s largest visa application contractor, working for more than 50 governments processing visa applications in 127 countries across the globe.

VSF will apply visa-level identity check standards to their MOOCs
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VSF They are now proposing to bring the rigorous identity check standards routinely required for visa applications to their MOOCs (which will offer MBAs starting at £7000), in addition to requiring the student to be physically present at one of its locations for a final exam before issuing the certificate.

Another trend that will undoubtedly affect the sector is that as Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning technologies improve at an ever-faster pace it will enable much better provisions for personalized learning.

A huge problem with online courses – which accounts for their higher drop-out rates where compared to their traditional counterparts – is that the lack of personal interaction with a tutor can lead to a one-size-fits-all approach, which can be demotivating.

This is something VSF-Oxademy courses will offer students in their blended learning courses, leveraging AI to identify each learner’s strengths and weaknesses and generate teaching paths based on the individual learner’s behaviour, personalising the learning to each student through real-time analysis of performance data.

“A unique feature of the VFS-Oxademy programmes is that they can be customised to individual needs of students, irrespective of location or background,” agrees Bernard Martyris, Chief of Human Resources at VFS Global.

Developing software that understands how you learn best and where you need to focus is a main area of investment not only for commercial enterprises, but in the burgeoning “venture philanthropy” sector.

The Gates foundation has given more than $300 million to personalised learning initiatives
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Since 2009, for example, the Gates foundation has given more than $300 million to support research and development on personalised learning, and they recently partnered with the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative to set aside a $12 million grant to support research and development into new ways of tailoring classroom instruction to individual students.

There’s no doubt that we’ve come a very long way with online learning, and are getting ever closer to fulfilling Isaac Asimov’s great vision – which he set out at a time when most of us could not conceive of having computers in our home, never-mind the Internet.

VFS-Oxademy programmes customise learning to student needs
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The future of learning might look like Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One
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Looking to the not-too-distant future, we can already envisage how Virtual and Mixed Reality technologies will increasingly be incorporated into the online learning strategy of major Universities institutions help to make such distance courses more immersive and engaging, blending the real and virtual world seamlessly and thus vastly increasing our ability to learn.

The future of learning will probably look a lot like Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One world, which will be brought to life for the big screen by Steven Spielberg. Bring on “Ready Player Learn”.

Now that MOOCs are mainstream, where does online learning go next? https://t.co/UZ5CY9TLIQ

— TNW Contributors (@TNWcontributors) July 19, 2017

For companies looking to get into Immersive technologies such as VR/AR/MR/XR our Virtual Reality Consultancy services offer guidance and support on how best to incorporate these into your brand strategy.

Alice Bonasio is a VR Consultant and Tech Trends’ Editor in Chief. She also regularly writes for Fast Company, Ars Technica, Quartz, Wired and others. Connect with her on LinkedInand follow @alicebonasio on Twitter.

The post Imagining the Future of Online Learning appeared first on Tech Trends.

And technology can make it so. OK, I’m paraphrasing Isaac Asimov a bit here, but the key idea is that we should enjoy learning, and want to carry on doing it for as long as we’re able to.

His vision was for a world where knowledge was widely available and so people could personalise their own learning paths, and educate themselves on all the things they were interested in.

Technology is enabling the creation of open learning environments that will eventually replace the idea of a traditional classroom
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In this article I reflect on some of the ideas that came up in a recent EdTech panel I attended which was hosted by Dell. The principles that emerged – such as empowering students in order to up their engagement with the learning process – chime very much with Mr Asimov’s futurist insights.

Technology is enabling the creation of open learning environments that will eventually replace the idea of a traditional classroom, and this will be significantly enhanced as virtual and augmented reality become more pervasive. Educators are largely embracing these changes, which bring higher levels of engagement and richer learning experiences to students. Learning — including vital digital skills such as coding — should be regarded as an enjoyable pursuit that is expected to continue throughout adult life, not as something we’re “finished with” as soon as we leave school.

The flipside of having intuitive technologies and invisible digital infrastructure is that the next generation might be proficient in using it, yet lack the digital skills required to make it
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Those were some of the key takeaways from a recent Technology in Education round table hosted by Dell at the iconic Gherkin building in London. The event brought together technology and education experts and was moderated by Matt Britland, ICT Director at Lady Eleanor Holles School, who led the discussion around how we can best incorporate existing and emerging technologies into the curriculum, supporting teachers and preparing students for a world where having a dynamic digital skill set will become even more essential.

“It’s not just about using technology, but understanding the reason why you’re using a particular technology. Once you get buy-in from parents and teachers as well as students, that’s when you have a successful integration of technology in the learning process,” says Britland drawing from his own personal experience of rethinking the systems in his school to ensure they could cope with being “bombarded” with over 4000 devices connected to the network, for example.

It all boils down to building engagement, and in practice this translates into blurring the boundaries between work and play
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“This type of digital infrastructure needs to be robust, scalable, flexible, and, above all, invisible,” says John Bailey, an education expert from Dell. “You don’t think about the fact you have running water, electricity or heating. It’s ubiquitous, a part of life. In the same way, we shouldn’t’ need to think about the infrastructure we use to access digital resources.”

Universally implementing such infrastructure is, of course, an enormous challenge, as not all schools have the internal expertise and resources to devise and deploy a comprehensive digital strategy. So there is a role for commercial partners in supporting this transition, but also a need for governments to prioritize and enable investment in this area at a broader policy level, so that we don’t end up creating a two-tier system where some schools can afford to become much more digitally advanced than others.

The flipside of having intuitive technologies and invisible digital infrastructure is that the next generation might be proficient in using technology, yet lack the core digital skills required to understand what makes that technology work.

“We’re teaching HTML and Python and a website called Code Adventures where they earn points, badges, etc.” says Britland. “In parents’ evenings they want to know what technology the students are using, they want to know that their daughter is coding.”

There are also many successful start-ups coming up with creative hackable toys that teach children principles of electronics, robotics and coding through play and gaming such as Kitronik, Sphero, Raspberry Pi, Technology Will Save Us and many others. And the advent of Virtual Reality will only bring with it more opportunities for teachers and students to experience technology in new ways, and to “get their hands dirty,” so to speak.

“When we talk about VR, we talk about those experiences,” agrees Jaime Donally.

Instructional Technology Coordinator and founder of edcamp Global. “And I love that.” However, once you have a class set of cardboards in the classroom, there is a lot more that can be done with that: “The next step, of course, is our kids being the creators of those experiences”

Tools like CoSpaces promise to make that process of generating content in Virtual Reality easy by offering a 3D visualization tool that allows users to select environments from a library, adding and adjusting various elements to create a personalized experience.

Once you get buy-in from parents and teachers and students, you have a successful integration of technology in the learning process
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It all boils down to building engagement, and in practice this translates into blurring the boundaries between work and play, making full use of tolls such as gamification so that students are constantly empowered to take responsibility and pride in their own learning, and to see it as a continuous process that doesn’t necessarily begin or end at the school gates. As David Whelan recently said when unveiling his Engage VR Education platform, we are much more likely to retain information if we create an emotional connection with that learning experience.

“That’s sometimes a difficult shift for schools to make, because we’re used to looking at things a certain way,” says Matt Britland, “but we want to instill a passion for learning in our students, and that doesn’t just come from learning what we tell them to learn, it’s about them going out and exploring, finding out things for themselves.”

This is, in fact, the direction that futurist Isaac Asimov predicted we would take. I find it fascinating to listen to old interviews — dating from a time way before the internet, when the idea of having a computer in one’s home seemed as outlandish as the plot of one his science fiction books — as he accurately predicts trends such as personalized learning, and how the symbiosis between technology and education will develop and democratize learning for the masses.

We should enjoy learning, and want to carry on doing it for as long as we're able to
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“Nowadays what people call learning is forced on you and everyone is forced to learn the same thing on the same day at the same speed, in class. For some it goes too fast, for some too slow, for some in the wrong direction. It seems to me that it’s through this machine that for the first time we’ll be able to have a 1:1 relationship between information source and information consumer.”

In the old days, he explains to his bewildered interviewer, you had tutors teaching children, and they would adapt their teaching to the tastes and abilities of each student. Few could afford this, however, so most children remained uneducated. When educating the masses later became a recognized necessity, the only way this could be achieved was through having one teacher for many students, and a curriculum to organize their learning. So you ended up with either a one-to-one relationship for the few, or a one-to-many relationship for the many. Through technology, however, we can finally enable a one-to-one relationship in the form of access to the gathered knowledge of the human species. And this, he emphasized, would not just benefit the young.

“People don’t stop what they enjoy doing just because they reach a certain age. They don’t stop having sex just because they turn 40, they keep it up as long as they can if they enjoy it. The trouble with learning is that most people don’t enjoy it because of the circumstances. Make it possible for people to enjoy learning and they’ll keep it up.”

I find that his outlook chimed with that of the panel, where the picture that emerges for the future of education is one where technology enables learning for everyone, regardless of their age, wealth, location, gender, race or any other factor. And one where everyone has quite a bit of fun in the process.

This article was originally published on IDG Connect

Imagining the Future of #EdTech https://t.co/oF2a3nJ62o @idgconnect @CIOonline @Dell @cospaces_io @GoogleForEdu #TechTrends #VR pic.twitter.com/2sueECrApA

— Alice Bonasio (@alicebonasio) October 10, 2016

Alice Bonasio is a VR Consultant and Tech Trends’ Editor in Chief. She also regularly writes for Fast Company, Ars Technica, Quartz, Wired and others. Connect with her on LinkedIn and follow @alicebonasio and @techtrends_tech on Twitter.

The post Learning Should Be as Fun as Sex appeared first on Tech Trends.