WEBVTT

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Who here went to college?
Raise your hands.

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I did too.

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I got to spend four years
on this beautiful campus.

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I learnt a lot about computer science
from my classes

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and even more about life
from my friends.

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I also developed
a lifelong love of orange and black.

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(Laughter)

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This is Teppo's son.

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He recently learnt to walk

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and even though Teppo
doesn't believe me when I tell him this,

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he's going to be walking off
to college pretty soon.

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So, Teppo. How do you think
your son's college experience

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is going to be, compared to ours?

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Teppo Jouttenus: I must admit
that I don't quite know.

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I have more questions than answers

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when I think about how will 
education be 20 years from now,

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both here in the US 
and around the world.

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But I do know that some things
must change,

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and here are four:

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education must get better.

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Too many people enter college 
unprepared to learn

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and leave unprepared to get 
a good job or be good citizens.

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One scary statistic 
from a recent study

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is that 36% of students
across a range of universities

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made no significant improvement

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in their critical thinking, reasoning,

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and writing skills
in four years of college.

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We can do better than that.

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VS: Education must get cheaper.

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If it doesn't, then billions of people
around the world

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who needs to be educated

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are not going to get access

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to the high quality education
they need.

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Just here in the US,

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there is over a trillion dollars
of student debt.

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Anyone here still have student loans?

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TJ: Education must be able
to adapt faster.

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Anyone's college or university

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were they specifically good
at making quick decisions,

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adapting to change? No.

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There are benefits
to keeping a steady course

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but sometimes changing education

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feels like taking a herd of elephants

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and trying to get them
to change directions.

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VS: And finally,
education has to last longer.

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It may actually turn out to be

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that four years of college
is too much

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but four years of education
is definitely not enough

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in today's quickly changing world.

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So let's review where we are starting,

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with traditional education first.

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TJ: The traditional education bundle

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has elements that are both non academic

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like housing and football teams,

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and academic,
like professors and classes,

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and it comes with a hefty price tag.

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There is a lot of experimentation
going on right now

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in ways of unbundling education.

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Taking these elements
in different combinations

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to meet various different needs.

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One interesting example is
taking online classes

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without the football teams

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and having them for free.

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This obviously will not solve

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all the challenges
we have in education

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but it raises
some interesting questions

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that are dear to our heart,
because we work at edX

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and there we publish courses
from top universities

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freely available to anyone
with an Internet connection.

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So, Victor, how does this differ
from the standard education bundle?

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VS: Sure. Before I worked at edX,
I spent several years

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helping create and teach
classes at Harvard.

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There we had a pretty standard model.

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We had a professor that gives lectures.

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I spent hundreds of hours
creating problems

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and then grading then
when they were submitted.

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Of course, students came 
to my section and did problems.

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Teppo has worked a lot
with creating edX classes

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so tell us about one of those
and we will see how it differs.

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TJ: Sure. As a program manager,

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my job is to work with professors
and their teams,

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and find the various different
components that come together

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to do the best possible 
online class that we can.

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For one MIT course, we started
with the legendary Physics professor,

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Walter Lewin,

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added in two other professors,
three lecturers, one postdoc,

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sprinkled into the mix some students,
a program manager, video team,

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software engineers,
and blended it all together

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to create the online version

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of Walter Lewin's
Electricity and Magnetism.

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And Victor was one
of the software engineers

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that built the platform
that makes all of this possible.

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Do you want to talk about
some of the elements of the class?

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VS: Sure. So, here are
some of the screens in the class.

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We have Walter Lewin,
or a video of Walter Lewin,

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describing the science
behind Van der Graaf generators.

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It's immediately followed by 
problems like this one asking you,

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did you actually understand
what you just saw?

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Where students get incentive back.

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We have interactive simulations
like this one,

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written specifically for this class,

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that shows how electric fields change
as charged particles move in them.

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And finally we have a discussion forum

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where students from all over the world

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can connect and discuss the material
and help each other learn.

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So, for example, in this particular screen

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one of the students posted
a relevant video from Youtube

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that illustrates some of the concepts
discussed in the class,

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sparking a discussion
where people were asking

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why this is working, 
what is going on.

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So together, compared to 
the experience I had at Harvard,

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this is somewhat different. 
We get this bundle,

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we lose that in-person connection
that I had with my students in section

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but we get this global forum
and global connections,

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and we get instant feedback,

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which is something that 
was much harder

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to do in a traditional model.

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So let's look at the edX class

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with the four aspects we said before.

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TJ: One way that the edX class
is pedagogically better

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than traditional lecturing is because

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the lecture is split into smalls snippets

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and you get instant feedback,

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so there is more engagement
with the student.

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It is freely available 
for the whole world

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and the team can adapt faster

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because they don't have 
to spend any energy

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recreating the parts that they loved.

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Instead, they can focus 
on improving the parts

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that they weren't happy with.

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And it opens up new possibilities
for lifelong learning.

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Our colleague Ruth's father is 89

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and he is still actively
taking edX classes.

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VS: Of course, not everything
about the online class is better.

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In particular, it costs a lot
to create such a class,

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and, as I mentioned earlier,

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we really lose that in-person connection
between teacher and student

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that can be so important in some cases

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to keep students motivated
and to help them get through the material.

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But one of the great things is,
once we have created this class,

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we can call up yet another bundle.

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We are already trying things like this,

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where we take Walter Lewin's course,

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and we bring it to a campus,
or a thousand campuses,

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and you can have the professor there

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instead of having to spend
those hundred of hours

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creating materials that we already have,

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guide their students through it,

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and really focus on addressing
the individual needs that they have

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and not just incorporating the basics.

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This is just one combination

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and the future of education
is going to involve

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lots of different experiments
and combinations.

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Only some of which
will involve online learning.

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That should bring us to...

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TJ: Blenders.

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Or how do we most effectively

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blend online and face-to-face 
elements in education,

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and how do we create
the most effective education bundles

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to meet the needs of different learners

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in different kind of circumstances.

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And this is where 
we need your help.

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As we and others 
continue to experiment

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we want you to try out
the different bundles

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and share what works well.

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So when you come across
a delicious educational smoothie...

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(Laughter)

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... tell your teachers,
tell your friends, tell your school,

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because the more demand there is
for awesome learning experiences

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the quicker the best educational bundles
become the new standard.

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VS: Of course, it's important to remember
some of these educational smoothies

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are going to have actual 
snow and ice, not computers.

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For example, this was my classroom
on a course I took several years ago

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with the National
Outdoor Leadership School.

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We spent several weeks
trekking through the mountains,

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learning about leadership and teaching,

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and trying to find our way
through the woods, and not get too lost.

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I learnt a lot from this course.

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I find myself using things I learnt here
pretty much every single day,

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which is not something I can say
from most of my college classes.

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This was one of the high points
of the trip.

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We were on top of a mountain

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and could really see
the landscape in front of us,

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and sort of gather a glimpse
of where we were headed.

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I find that working in the everchanging
landscape of education today

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is sometimes like this,

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where it feels like we really see
what is going on

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and we know where we are going,
but more often it feels like this,

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which is an afternoon on the trip,

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trying to find camp
in a half frozen swamp

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in the middle of a snowstorm.

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But we did it,

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and one of the things
I learnt from this trip,

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and from this course was

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how important it is
to really embrace the uncertainty

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when you are exploring a new territory
that you don't know already.

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And I think that
if we do that in education

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we will be able to discover
better combinations

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that more succesfully help people 
teach and help people learn.

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We hope that we've managed
to convince you

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that the future of education is exciting

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and that perhaps
you are a little nervous about it.

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And we hope we help.

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Join in discussion around this,
try new things, and share what works.

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TJ: I don't know
if my son's college bundle

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will include a football team or not.

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But what I do know
is that when we continue, all of us,

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to experiment and share
the best educational bundles

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we can make education better,
cheaper, faster, and longer.

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Thank you.

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(Applause)