Digital Revolution, Educational Process and Information Age

This information age essay aims to explore what impact the contemporary digital revolution had on educational process and outcomes. Among the explored aspects are the change in the role of educator, in curriculum and in education process. Long-term results of societal and educational digitalisation discussed in light of their impact on contemporary education process and on the way they shape back the contemporary society.

Historically, society defines educational purposes, who may benefit from education, in what forms may it come and what are the accepted educational standards. On the other hand, education also has immense impact on society, and thus may change its structure, worldview, ethical norms and laws. For example, during the Renaissance period, when societal changes, like decline of feudalism, crusaders, fall of Constantinople and decline of the influence of church, resulted in shift from clerical to secular societal worldview, education began to flourish and became accessible to lower societal classes. As a result, education became more practical, which in turn resulted in rapid progress in science and technology. That technological progress resulted in inventions, like printing press, which contributed to further spread of literacy and education, and shaped society for many centuries ahead the renaissance period. There are even claims that technological and scientific progress during the Renaissance period is the foundation for contemporary digital revolution, which affected society in general and education in particular.

On the other hand, apart from advance in science and technology, Renaissance resulted in humanisation of society, because since that period those outside elite class began to be included in social and political life, education, arts and science. As a results, contemporary education in its shape and form with humanistic methods like encouragement of critical thinking, creativity and applicability of knowledge, may be related to educational and societal changes during the renaissance period.

However, in the recent decades society has experienced yet another major change, influenced by digital revolution. By its influence digital revolution may be compared to renaissance, taking into account the tremendous impact on nearly all aspects of social life, from communication, interpersonal relationships and medicine, to economy, business, politics and social welfare.

Societal change 

Digital era, also named the information age, began in the beginning of the 20th century with rapid development of information technologies in general and internet in particular. Comparing to the previous industrial era, where education was mostly utilitarian, digitalisation created opportunities for further humanisation of society. Rapid development of internet and information technologies changes the way people communicate, making communication instant, regardless of the distance between correspondents, and providing masses with instant access to information (Goldie, 2016). That, in turn, had a huge impact on many roles, which previously had the ultimate authority, from medical doctors to scientists to teachers and educators. In the digital age anyone digitally literate enough may access information about nearly anything by connecting to internet and browsing through web pages. Recent technological development even provided masses with instant access to data from their personal mobile phones. Moreover, the found information may be straight away discussed with peers or specialists. For example, news may be checked and proved or disproved instantly, merely via text message, email or a phone call. Despite that, it also created opportunities for creation of misleading information, fake scientific research and fake news. The role of education as of source of information and knowledge had to change during digital era, due to change in the educator status and in the ways the information may be accessed.

Impact on the educator’s role 

In digital era, where access to information is easy and in many instances free, role of an educator as a source of knowledge can no longer be valid and sustainable. Teacher’s authority can no longer be based on the fact that he or she knows more than student. Merely knowledge ceased to be important in the eyes of students. Moreover, rapid development of research in all areas of human life made many theories and facts obsolete, further jeopardizing the authority of a teacher as source of knowledge and information. Contemporary student may pose questions about the status quo of many areas of social and personal life, from medicine to law to social justice and educational paradigms.

Due to these changes teachers and educators nowadays are expected to be the leaders for their students, to teach students how to think rather than what to think, because it became increasingly much more important to be able to differentiate between trustworthy and false information, rather than to memorise information or to understand concepts, ideas and theories. Induction of critical thinking became an integral part of educator’s role.

In light of these demands, teachers and educators expected to undergo constant professional development and to improve their teaching methods by integrating information and communication technology (ICT). There is also an increasing call to link education to industry and business demands, creating thus more employable graduates in the future. Some of the institutions take into account professional experience of the teacher and prefer educators with industrial or business experience, relevant to taught subject.

To be successful in their teaching mission, contemporary educators should create interest to their subject, engage and challenge the students. The major change of the educators’ role is thus in shift from mentoring to leadership, from providing information and knowledge to teaching critical thinking and evaluation of information in terms of its validity, reliability and applicability.

Impact on education process role

Information age is also remarkable by promotion of democracy, freedom of speech, liberalism and human rights. In some cases it creates dilemma about what topics should be included in school curriculum. Moreover, the included topics should be taught in a way that promotes equality, democracy and other liberal values. In case of history classes it may create a problem, especially if the taught material touches on periods of war, confrontation, slavery and human traffic. Smith suggests fostering teacher’s theoretical competence may resolve this issue and should help to create coherent history subject curricula. This suggestion contradicts the very idea of changes in role of an educator in digital age, bringing it back to the role of mentor. Another solution to the curriculum dilemma, suggested by Williamson, is promotion of critical thinking amongst students by including seminars and discussions amongst students. That way the taught material is delivered in context and thus students have chance to create their own opinion about the material and to draw their conclusions, which is in accordance with liberal values, like freedom of information and freedom of speech, promoted in information age.

The very educational process has changed in the digital era. Instead of old-fashioned classes, where teacher educates students by delivering them material in a lecture-style and assessing how well they retained the material by conducting exams, contemporary educational process includes, for example, project-oriented tasks, promoting creativity and fully utilizing students abilities and skills, online tasks and tests, helping students to obtain instant feedback. Technology enhanced assessment, though, should be used with caution, because it may create social exclusion and digital dividedness, due to unequal access to information technology amongst different socio-economic layers.

Integration of digital technology into education process may benefits both teachers and students, because teachers increase versatility of their teaching methods and demonstration aids, and students receive information and education in easier, illustrative and interactive ways. This, in turn, increases students’ interest and involvement in educational process, resulting in better educational outcomes.

Impact of educational changes on society

The above mentioned changes in education had inevitable impact on contemporary society. With development of ICT tasks, involving memorising, fading away, which in turn affects students ability to memorise things both short-term and long-term. This, in turn, has negative impact on attention span. Constant distraction, coming in form of messages and notifications about updates in social media create situation of information overload. In this situation of permanent engagement with technology and communication education plays pivotal role in helping to deal with information in a healthy and productive way. Teaching students critical thinking and evaluation of data helps them to make right choices and to deal with information in a productive and useful way.

On the other hand, in the recent decades entrepreneurship started to play a big role in business, economy and many industries. It changes the structure of conventional workplace. Some professions becomes obsolete, while many others emerge. Communication technologies opened new opportunities for remote jobs, creating possibilities for better work-life balance, allowing people to work from home. Nowadays there are even companies which do not have a permanent office, but collaborate exclusively online, via various internet platforms. All those changes are possible not just because of the ICT development, but also thankfully to changes in educational paradigms. Shift from utilitarian education to humanitarian one is the cornerstone of better interpersonal communication, which in turn promotes better collaboration between people of different nationalities, races, genders, and so on. Engagement of students in project-oriented studies and in discussions promotes open mind and creativity, which in turn shapes the society into a better and more accepting place to live in. With more freedom and choice, promoted by education, the society benefits from new ideas, technologies and developments in nearly all its aspects.

Conclusion

Similar to the changes in society and education during the Renaissance period, digital revolution, commenced in the beginning of the 20th century, has rapidly changed the way we communicate, learn and teach. The changes happened in all the aspects of educational process. Role of teachers shifted from mentor and knowledge holder to facilitator of learning and critical thinking. Curriculum includes more and more humanities, and tests and examinations are more often done online and check ability to critically evaluate rather than to memorise information. These changes in education system inevitably affected the society, which became more liberal and democratic, and allowed implement on practice many novel ideas, which in turn changed the way we communicate, work, collaborate and live.

Reference 

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