A New Teaching Model for Advanced Education

Indeed, I think just about anyone who has ever stopped to consider the challenge of education in the future would agree that it won't be long until everything is different. The way we have taught humans previously by sitting them down in rows, and making them memorize various facts seems to be quite archaic in a world flowing with information.

Obviously, it makes sense to leverage all of these new technologies, such as virtual reality, simulation, spectral imaging, electronic textbooks, the Internet, game-ification, dream technologies, and direct information downloading to the brain for the future. Okay so, let's talk about all this for moment shall we?

There was a very interesting article not long ago titled; "Stanford concludes raising $6.2B for new research, teaching model," published in the Silicon Valley and San Jose Business Journal on February 8, 2012 and written by Lisa Sibley. The article stated;

"The Stanford Challenge has transformed the way our faculty and students work," said Stanford President John Hennessy in the statement. "We've undertaken a new model in higher education, with experts from different fields joining together not only in research, but also in teaching. This kind of collaboration has enabled Stanford to assume a larger role in addressing global problems. We are already making a greater difference."

Now then, I totally agree that a new teaching methodology and model is needed, very much so, which is something we do indeed discuss here often enough at our think tank. There is no reason we can't turn the world of education on its head, it's time to upgrade all we know about the way we instruct our students. In fact, Stanford itself has done experiments with online professor videos and their online lecture series. It is amazing how folks all over the world can tune in and get this information at little or no cost.

If we really want to train people for the new future, then it makes sense to figure out a way to do it less expensively, and more efficiently. That is what Stanford is trying to do, and with that level of infusion into their research budget, they ought to be able to do just that, and why not? Have you looked at the increases of tuition costs in the United States? It's been going up at between 8 to 10% per year, for quite a while.

In fact, the information that's being learned by upper division degreed college students may not even be useful by the time they get out of school with that degree in hand. It will be outdated, but those loans will have to be paid back for decades to come. You can see the challenges and it's good to see that Stanford is working on it. Indeed I hope you will please consider all this and think on it.