In the latest edition of Global Focus Magazine, Professor Paul Kofman, Dean of the Faculty of Business and Economics, says universities need to shake up their offerings to meet the educational needs of the workplaces of the future.
Excerpt from Global Focus Magazine
Technological disruption affects every sector of the economy including education. From TEDx talks on YouTube to edX MOOCs and Udacity nanodegrees, the mode of delivery is increasingly online.
Just as FinTech lowered the bar on entry to the banking sector through mobile banking devices and robot advice, EdTech allows entrepreneurial online education providers to make a similar low-cost, high-volume entry. Universities were ill-prepared for this challenge. Until fairly recently their attitude was to wait and see. They are now finally getting in on the act, and doing so on their terms.
As degree-granting accredited and quality-assured institutions, universities have a significant advantage over private providers. They are now using that advantage while adopting the same disruptive delivery model. By deconstructing traditional degree programmes into “stackable” learning modules, universities can maintain and exploit their credibility and reputation while catering for significant unmet demand...
...many post-professional students are overwhelmed by the prospect of starting a degree programme with the potential not to complete it. The investment in time and finance simply does not stack up against those risks.
What do these post-professionals want? Answer: Flexible stand-alone learning modules designed as stackable building blocks into various degree programmes; where sequencing of subjects is not fixed but flexible and multi-dimensional; where the knowledge acquired can stand alone in delivering on a single module’s learning objectives; and the level of time/financial investment can be tailored to individual circumstances.
Read the full article at Global Focus Magazine.