Redefining Learning: 4 Trends to watch in 2014

“Learning Moves” is the motto of this year’s ONLINE EDUCA, but where is learning going? What will learning look like in the future? And how will new technologies and forward-thinking approaches help us develop new, efficient, and flexible ways of learning to supplement and enhance the traditional classroom curriculum? These are questions that excite us at Rosetta Stone. We believe these four key developments will contribute to redefining global learning for the future.

by Judy Verses, President Global Enterprise & Education at Rosetta Stone

1) Learning Offers Mobility

Mobile devices provide new pathways to effective personalised learning experiences that are output-driven, geared towards immediate practical applications, and that can easily be integrated into a busy schedule. Younger learners of the Digital Native generation gravitate naturally to mobile learning solutions. Take the UK for instance; there the use of tablet computers has tripled among 5 – 15 year olds in the past year, according to Ofcom. 71% of US students in a recent Nielsen report said they are interested in accessing textbooks on their tablets. But it is not only students that are open to the possibilities offered by these technologies; more than 80% of US teachers in a national survey by PBS believe that tablets enrich classroom learning.

Mobile learning is clearly on the rise. However, I believe that the key to success here is to enable learning across the mobile spectrum, including desktop PCs, tablet devices, and mobile devices alike, whether used at home, at work, or in school. It is important to offer learners access to a coherent learning experience across all devices, no matter what, where, or when they learn.

2) Learning Welcomes Collaboration

With the expanding reach of globalisation, collaboration increases in importance. New technologies and particularly the Internet enable borderless cooperation and communication in real time. Collaboration is powerful and delivers on its promise. Examples we see already include web-sessions where learners from all over the world meet up and connect in virtual classrooms. Learners quickly find themselves in a collaborative environment where they work and support each other as a group. Besides focusing on their own learning progress, they also have an opportunity to engage in discussion and take over responsibility for the group. As shared work and collaborative problem-solving gain increasing career value, it is vital that education focus intensively on collaboration and intercultural connectivity.

3) Learning Never Stops

Education does not end at the classroom door. What this really means continues to evolve in today’s globalised and highly complex world. The major purpose of education must be to prepare our students for their future careers. There is a high level of demand, in many jobs throughout many industries, for transferrable skills like problem solving, the ability to speak more than one language, and the confidence to communicate with people from all over the world. Faced with this demand and the fast pace of technological change, we realise that a new requirement for success is that we become lifelong learners. In response, the education culture must create self-paced, on-going learning that makes knowledge more accessible in new, dynamic ways – anytime, anywhere. Technology makes this new learning culture possible.

4) Learning Generates Results

As we evaluate the skills and performances of students, our focus should be on the outcome rather than on the resources available to them. New technology offers robust tools to track individual student progress and to project student achievement within a given period of time. It allows teachers to gain clear insights into areas of strength and weakness and to adapt the individual learning path accordingly. In the US, for instance, entire districts rely on Lexia Learning to see projected literacy levels of an entire student population by the end of a school year. In other regions of the world such as Australia, South Africa or Hong Kong, we see similar adoptions of outcome-based learning methods. We expect this approach to become increasingly prevalent as technology and its adoption advances.

At ONLINE EDUCA BERLIN we would like to welcome you to our booth (B53) and invite you to join our discussion on Friday, December 6^th. I am pleased to speak with Prof. Mitchell Stevens of Stanford University, the Saudi-Arabian Deputy Minister of Educational Affairs Mohammed Al-Ohali, and Philipp Schmidt of the non-profit online open learning community “Peer 2 Peer University” about models for global learning.

Judy Verses, President Global Enterprise & Education at Rosetta Stone is presenting on

A Lifetime of Learning: Rewards of a technology culture

Friday, 6 December 2013
9.30am – 11.00am
Potsdam I