When we usually think about the year 2020, we assume of a time somewhere in the future where flying cars would be the norm and contact with alien civilizations would’ve been established. Followers of our former president Shri Abdul Kalam would probably think of the vision he portrayed through the book “Vision 2020”.

Of course, in our eternal love for procrastination, most of us forget the fact that 2020 is not the far future. It is very much the near future- just 4 years away!

With such proximity to the promising year, let’s actually examine what are the possibilities that could exist in the third decade of the 21st Century- particularly in the field of education.

Well, we’re no soothsayers or oracles to be able to predict the state of education in the 2020s. But, we actually are capable of is to examine the current trends and plot the graph that ends at the year 2020.

So, what indeed are the trends in the education sector vis-a-vis 2016?

Mobile Learning:

Mobile learning, or mLearning. It’s estimated that the mobile learning industry alone will grow to over $37 billion by 2020. Obviously, this is an eLearning trend people just can’t get enough of.

Gamification:

Gamification in the course curriculum promotes knowledge retention and also provides a certain degree of entertainment. It does a great job of bringing elements of entertainment and relaxation to any type of online training. It’s possible that the gamification market will top off at about $2.8 billion in 2016.

Video-Based Training:

eLearning designers made a wise move when they began to implement video into online learning. Video-based training is becoming so popular that about 98 percent of ALL organizations will include video in their digital learning strategies in 2016.

Big Data:

Big Data, for eLearning, would be the data generated by learners who interact with the learning content as a part of their course. This data is collected through Learning Management Systems.

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Now, that we have such interesting trends on hand, can we actually get to the task of predicting how the education scenario would like in the future?

 A wild guess couldn’t hurt our chances.

Prediction: 

Individualized training will be the norm as opposed to classroom based learning. The courses will happen at a pace optimised to match the student’s learning speed. While tutors will continue play a role in the learning process, their role will be limited to that of a supervisor of the learning process while the knowledge in itself will not be imparted by them. It will likely be digitized and taught using interactive video content. The tutors will play a role in taking forward the knowledge of the candidate and direct them towards their areas of strength. The performance and areas of strengths in themselves will be determined using metrics that are not based on memorization of concepts, but application of the concepts.  More importantly, technologies such as Big Data will help evaluate the learning attributes of students and generate reports that will help tutors understand their students better. 

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