How New Age Academic Programs In Exponential Technologies Will Redefine Future Of Education
In my previous articles in Business World; I have written extensively about the future of education and how we can improve the efficacy of academic institutions with an introduction of topical programs in exponential technologies - Artificial Intelligence, IoT, Blockchain, cybersecurity, RPA etc. I truly believe that for the next generation of the workforce to have a successful career and deliver demonstrable impact to the world, it is important that they start off with academic programs in these areas, while continuously maintaining a strong focus on unlearning and relearning skills to ensure that they stay relevant.
The set of exponential technologies that I have mentioned above are all reverberating in the world of technology today. It is certain that gaining prowess of these exponential technologies will be crucial in the development of new professionals. Education providers – schools, academic institutions, MOOC’s should be extremely focused on giving students conceptual and contextual knowledge in these stated programs. The good news is that we are seeing an increased activity in educational providers introducing a variety of new age programs; students, working professionals would fare well if best of breed content and contextualized use cases are infused in the learning to make the programs industry relevant.
Beyond providing technical expertise in these programs; new age courses also need to incorporate multi-disciplinary skills. Exponential technologies will most certainly require a new approach to project management and talent management, as well as sweeping changes in the design paradigm. In the continuum, we also need programs that inculcate crucial aspects of themes such as design thinking and behavioral sciences to augment the development of the future of education and new age professionals. Overall, I believe technology, people and process are the three key areas which will form the cornerstones of the future of education.
New age academic programs in exponential technologies
This seems to be the most obvious part. The landscape of technology is changing rapidly, and we urgently need to reskill and upskill our existing and future workforce to ensure a steady supply of talent stream of working professionals that stay relevant. New age courses in computer science need to focus on developing talent in the field of Artificial Intelligence and its various paradigms - Machine Learning, Deep Learning, Natural Language Processing, Quantum Computing, Cloud, DevOps, Augmented and Virtual Reality, Blockchain etc.
Whilst the attention seems to be skewed towards computer science education, there are other technical skill areas that are also to be augmented with new age skill sets and learning programs. For instance, mechanical engineers would do well to achieve some level of learning in robotics and 3D Printing. Electronics graduates should absolutely focus their learning on the development of new age enabling equipment such as GPUs and Quantum Computing. Operations and Supply Chain subject matter experts would also do well to extend their skill sets to machine learning and blockchain as well.
Learning for Managing the Workforce of the Future
With advances in the fields of technology and the science of management typically ordain regular disruptions on how organizations manage their workforce. Teams in the workforce of the future will likely be changing more dynamically over the course of projects as individuals with new skills will continue to augment team compositions. Similarly, with an increase in automation, we will soon see managers required to build physical and virtual teams working together to address the challenges faced by businesses. This will require a paradigm shift in the way teams and organizations are managed in the future, and it is important for new age courses to address this shift.
Teams of the future will be more diverse and interdisciplinary than ever before. Managing these teams, their aspirations and coaching for improved performance with a new set of metrics will be the new imperatives in managing the workforce of the future. It is therefore unusually important that we equip managers with the skills to address and make the most of this disruption in the workplace.
Reimagining the Design of New Age Technology
The third critical piece is the whole aspect around design. It is a common misconception that the field of design is restricted to just look and feel. There is a famous quote by Steve Jobs which clears the air around the importance of design – “Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.” That is truly how modern technologists and business executives should treat design – as the creative process required to build truly breakthrough products and services.
We are already seeing the first inroads being made by design frameworks such as Design Thinking and Human-Centered Design. These frameworks aid in the development of the process, as well as the final software, hardware being developed by putting the user at the center of the journey. There is an additional case that I will make for incorporating Behavioral Sciences as well into this list of new age courses, as it can bring in fascinating insights to the development process through Behavioral Economics and cognitive neuroscience.
For us to herald the future of education, it is also critical to ensure few other enablements to delivering these new age courses. To begin with, we need a strong pipeline of academicians in these domains to facilitate the massive relearning that is required for the workforce. Next, we also need to improve the overall access to these courses. To some extent, MOOCs have helped democratize access to education. But we also need to ensure a high level of awareness of these courses and their value to a much larger audience. Finally, these courses must be continually updated and revised. Education as a field has for too long been a laggard in matching to changing industry expectations, but we cannot afford to have that any longer. We need to ensure that these new age programs that define the future of education are constantly updated with the newest breakthroughs in their respective fields.
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