The Learning Revolution Impacting Malaysian Higher Education

Note that the word ‘revolution’ is used and not ‘evolution’ or ‘transformation’. Revolution refers to a radical or dramatic change in conditions, attitudes, operations and ways of doing things. For example, the Industrial Revolution is marked by a rapid and major change in the economy with the general introduction of power-driven machinery. Just like the Industrial Revolution, the Learning Revolution has introduced a ‘new’ way of learning brought about by the convergence of THREE developments – Internet technologies, Digital content and Devices (see Figure).

How Students Learn

Today’s learners live in two worlds – the physical world and the cyber world or cyberspace. Four decades ago, learners spent most of their time in physical world playing football, climbing trees, swimming, fishing and watching movies in the cinema to name a few. Today, even these physical activities are done in cyberspace and learners are spending lots of time in cyberspace.  Generation Y learners grew up while the internet was maturing while General Z learners were born with the internet. They are unable to imagine what is like without connection to the web. A mother asked her son, “How was school?” The boy replied, “The internet was slow”.  It was his first day at kindergarten.

• Internet Technologies – The advent of the internet has connected billions of people. Together with has seen the evolution of numerous communication tools such as email, WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram and other.
• Devices – The introduction of the personal computer, laptop, tablet, smartphone and various types of wearables has enabled billions of people to access the internet anywhere and anytime. More and more people are able to acquire these devices as the hardware gets cheaper while broadband and 3G (or 4G) becomes increasingly affordable.
• Digital Content – The internet and the devices would have not much meaning if the web was devoid of content.  The billions of pages of text, video, audio, animations, images, graphics and others uploaded and stored has enabled access to the largest library on earth.

To what extent have Malaysian higher educational institutions taken advantage of the learning revolution? Whether they like it or not, the Learning Revolution is impacting how students learn, what we teach, how we teach and how we assess learning.

• Today’s learners use Google and YouTube as an ‘auxiliary memory’ besides their three stores of memory (sensory, working and long-term memory) which they refer to anywhere and anytime.
• Today’s learners use Google and YouTube as a personal external expert which they consult on a variety of topics 24/7
• Today’s learners want information in ‘bite size’ because of their short attention span and having to sieve through massive amounts of information.
• Today’s learners are fond of multitasking – listening, watching, talking and working on their laptops at the same time though psychologists disagree that it is not effective
• Today’s learners are content creators and content curators with everyone is a videographer
• Today’s learners prefer learning from video and audio clips and less from text.

Are colleges and universities going to continue to teach these new generation of students the same way they did in the 1980s or the 1990s? “If we teach today’s students as we taught yesterday’s, we rob them of tomorrow”. This was stated by American educationist, John Dewey in 1930.

What We Teach?

The Learning Revolution has shed light on what to teach in colleges and universities. Rapid changes in various sectors of the economy demand that higher education should be adept and agile in meeting the needs of the job market. New curriculum models such as nano-degrees, mini-masters and massive open online courses (MOOC) are discussed which Malaysian colleges and universities should take heed. For example, the Malaysian Qualification Agency (MQA) allows for MOOCs to be transfered to a bachelor or master degree. Thus, a student who takes a MOOC in ‘marketing’ from Harvard or Wharton is able to transfer credits to a bachelor or master programme in any Malaysian university. Similarly, MQA has provided guidelines for colleges and universities in offering online and distance learning programmes which has been described as a disruptive innovation.

• Are we teaching stuff in our colleges and universities that employers and graduates need for jobs in the 21st century?
• Are we preparing our learners with the skills and values required by jobs in the 21st century?
• Are we preparing learners for jobs that have not been invented?

“Five years from now on the web for free you’ll be able to find the best lectures in the world…..It will be better than any single university….will no longer be at hallowed institutions, reserved  for the few, but on the web for everyone who wants access to them”   – Bill Gates

Bill Gates said it in 2010 and it is already a reality. The billions of pages of text and video clips available on the web explain concepts and principles better than many university teachers. Students also have the option to read, watch and listen to them over and over again. It is like having a personal lecturer on the smartphone!

How We Teach

The Learning Revolution has enabled new approaches to teaching in higher education. The traditional lecture has been challenged and replaced with ‘flipped learning’. Flipped learning is a pedagogical approach in which the conventional notion of classroom-based learning is inverted, so that students are introduced to the learning material before class, with classroom time then being used to deepen understanding through discussion with peers and problem-solving activities facilitated

How We Assess

Have colleges and universities re-visited their methods of assessing learners? Certainly, many of the assessment techniques may not be appropriate for the 21st century.

I am calling for assessments that don’t simply measure whether students can fill in a bubble on a test, but whether they possess 21st century skills like problem solving and critical thinking, entrepreneurship and creativity. — President Barack Obama, March 2009

The learning revolution opens up new ways of assessing the knowledge, skills and values of learners which was not possible in the 80s. For example, with interactive videos and augmented reality (AR), learners can be taken to authentic situations and assessed accordingly.