No matter how niche, creators will find value from exchange of knowledge, says Nandan Nilekani at the inauguration of the Future of Learning conference at IIM Bangalore
15 January, 2018: Nandan Nilekani, Chairman, EkStep, and Non Executive Chairman, Infosys, inaugurated a three-day conference on ‘The Future of Learning’, hosted by the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore, in collaboration with IIT Bombay, at the IIMB campus here today.
“In earlier times, learning was a rite of passage. The model was ‘study-earn-retire’. This has been replaced by learning as a life-long activity. We will be learning and earning. Therefore, we must create infrastructure that enables continuous and life-long learning. Just-in-time learning will also become important and so will learning in small sachets. As each of us will have our unique journeys of learning, we need to create infrastructure so that samaj (society), bazaar (market) and sarkar (government) can work together to support this revolution,” he said, emphasizing that it is no longer about solving problems but about distributing the ability to solve problems and co-create at scale.
“It’s great to see two great institutions – IIT Bombay and IIM Bangalore – come together for this conference,” observed Nandan. In his presentation, ‘Micro is the New Mega’, Nandan focused on how to learn in a Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous (VUCA) world. “Today, 2.5 billion people have smartphones and they have options in terms of data, apps and capabilities. This has an impact on education too. Digital unbundling leads every sector, including education, to go from mega to micro and creates new ways to mix and match.”
Remarking that we are seeing the third mass revolution in education, triggered and powered by new-age platforms, and adding that data is the “new soil”, Nandan spoke of how unbundling to micro and the data avalanche will lead to more automation and millions of micro work packets, and rise of second-generation platforms or the gig economy. “In terms of the future of learning, this means we must reimagine what will happen in terms of these mega trends because universities will become platforms that distribute the ability to teach and learn,” he said, adding that universities will become testing grounds for blended learning models.
The Question and Answer session, following Nandan’s talk, discussed the forces that are driving the change in the education sector such as increasing globalization (fiercely competitive domestic and international student markets); greater global mobility (of academics, students and academic brands); an intensifying clamour for democratization of knowledge and access; and the emergence of disruptive digital technologies that drive innovations and offer leapfrogging opportunities. “These developments have important implications for the universities of the future. Successful universities of the future will not be limited by physical spaces or contracts. University learning spaces will be built collaboratively by traditional educational institutions, non-academic subject experts, technopreneurs and investors and the focus will be on the distribution of the ability to solve problems,” Nandan responded.
Earlier in the day, Professor P D Jose, Co-Chair of FoL 2018 and Faculty in the Strategy area at IIMB, welcomed the 300+ delegates – from industry and academia, deans, and directors, and chairpersons of educational institutes, and set the context for the conference. “The education sector is set for a major makeover. The twentieth-century model, characterized by intense faculty-student interactions in brick and mortar classrooms, is fast changing to one of need-based and asynchronous exchanges in a virtual space,” he said, adding that the conference will examine how to bridge the learning divide in the country and not let it go the way of the digital divide.
The Future of Learning conference is the first in the series of annual conferences alternating between IIM Bangalore and IIT Bombay for the next three years.
In his opening remarks, Prof. Deepak B Phatak, from IIT Bombay and Co-Chair of FoL 2018, highlighted disruption in the education sector and spoke of the need to bring the different silos together and focus on creative disruption.
Introducing the chief guest, Prof. Phatak focused on Nandan’s involvement in the education space through generous funding and ideation. “Nandan’s amazing energy, commitment and passion are an inspiration,” he added.
In his address, Prof. G Raghuram, Director, IIM Bangalore, said: “The emerging convergence of technologies, entrepreneurship, and risk capital can create new educational market places and radically transform the future of educational institutions and the future of education itself.”
Drawing from his recent visit to a Heads of Institutions conference at Singapore, Prof. Raghuram said the universities of the future must develop a multi-disciplinary and inter-disciplinary focus, provide access to quality education and use digital as an enabler.
Highlighting IIMB’s initiatives in this direction, such as the Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) programme in the field of management education, the IIMB director spoke of the collaboration between NASSCOM and IIMB in creating a learning platform by crowdsourcing content in the leadership domain for MSMEs, and announced the launch of the Centre for Teaching and Learning at IIM Bangalore, here today.
Centre for Teaching & Learning
The Centre for Teaching and Learning (CTL) at IIM Bangalore is being set up to understand evolving best practices of teaching and learning and to disseminate such understanding for increasing teaching effectiveness.
Launching the Centre, Prof. G Raghuram, Director, IIMB, said: “The Centre for Teaching and Learning will conduct teaching workshops for faculty and doctoral students, thus acting as a national resource for improving the standards of teaching in institutes of higher education.”
In his presentation, Prof. Sourav Mukherji, Chairperson of the newly-launched Centre for Teaching and Learning, offered an overview of the plans of the centre. “The Centre will also evolve measures to evaluate teaching performance and learning, and will focus on research in innovation in teaching.”
Academic Panel
The inauguration of the Centre for Teaching and Learning was preceded by an academic panel on challenges in technology-enabled education. The panel examined how new developments will change the landscape of higher learning and what implications this will have for the educationists and educational institutions.
Members of the academic panel, including Rishikesha T Krishnan, Director, IIM Indore, Shailendra Raj Mehta, President and Director, MICA, Ajit Parulekar, Director, Goa Institute of Management, and Neelu Rohmera, Director, IIM Sirmaur, agreed that while digitization promises to revolutionize pedagogical approaches regarding efficacy and effectiveness, these innovative approaches also pose new challenges.
For instance, it is still unclear if and how learning platforms will come together to gain insights into how learners learn. Several facets related to the pedagogical aspects of digital learning, such as personalized learning, online assessments and blended learning, are still not adequately researched or understood, and need plenty of work.
Technology and Policy Tracks
The technology track of the conference will focus on potentials and perils of emerging technologies in the context of digital learning. The rapid pace of technology changes and the interplay between entrepreneurship, technology and policy and their impacts also create both opportunities and challenges that need a closer examination.
The policy track will examine the role of public policy and the need for adapting the existing regulatory frameworks to benefit from the leapfrogging opportunities that innovations in educational technology provide. For example, given India’s own need to upskill its population and its potential to be low cost, high-quality educational hub for the world what should policymakers focus in the near term and midterm? How can the goals of accessibility, high quality and relevance be maintained without compromising innovation and enterprise? What new competencies should regulators develop and what roles should they play in helping traditional institutions to leverage the power of technology and adapt to digital learning?
Speakers and Panellists
The three-day conference on ‘Future of Learning’ brings leaders of higher educational institutions, educational policy makers, practitioners and L&D Technology providers on a single platform and aims to provoke thought, showcase innovation and share knowledge along three dimensions of the future of learning: Pedagogy, Policy and Technology.
The three-day conference will feature panellists and speakers including Anant Agarwal, CEO, EdX; Andrew Ng, Professor, Stanford University; Simon Nelson, CEO, Future Learn; Deepak B Phatak, Professor, IIT Bombay; G. Raghuram, Director, IIM Bangalore; R. Subrahmanyam, Additional Secretary (Technical Education), MHRD, GoI; Ronnie Screwvala, Co-Founder and Chairman, UpGrad; Amit Goyal, India Country Director, EdX; Mayank Kumar, Co-Founder and MD, UpGrad; Ishan Gupta, Managing Director, Udacity India; and Andrew Thangaraj, Professor, IIT Madras.
No matter how niche, creators will find value from exchange of knowledge, says Nandan Nilekani at the inauguration of the Future of Learning conference at IIM Bangalore
15 January, 2018: Nandan Nilekani, Chairman, EkStep, and Non Executive Chairman, Infosys, inaugurated a three-day conference on ‘The Future of Learning’, hosted by the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore, in collaboration with IIT Bombay, at the IIMB campus here today.
“In earlier times, learning was a rite of passage. The model was ‘study-earn-retire’. This has been replaced by learning as a life-long activity. We will be learning and earning. Therefore, we must create infrastructure that enables continuous and life-long learning. Just-in-time learning will also become important and so will learning in small sachets. As each of us will have our unique journeys of learning, we need to create infrastructure so that samaj (society), bazaar (market) and sarkar (government) can work together to support this revolution,” he said, emphasizing that it is no longer about solving problems but about distributing the ability to solve problems and co-create at scale.
“It’s great to see two great institutions – IIT Bombay and IIM Bangalore – come together for this conference,” observed Nandan. In his presentation, ‘Micro is the New Mega’, Nandan focused on how to learn in a Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous (VUCA) world. “Today, 2.5 billion people have smartphones and they have options in terms of data, apps and capabilities. This has an impact on education too. Digital unbundling leads every sector, including education, to go from mega to micro and creates new ways to mix and match.”
Remarking that we are seeing the third mass revolution in education, triggered and powered by new-age platforms, and adding that data is the “new soil”, Nandan spoke of how unbundling to micro and the data avalanche will lead to more automation and millions of micro work packets, and rise of second-generation platforms or the gig economy. “In terms of the future of learning, this means we must reimagine what will happen in terms of these mega trends because universities will become platforms that distribute the ability to teach and learn,” he said, adding that universities will become testing grounds for blended learning models.
The Question and Answer session, following Nandan’s talk, discussed the forces that are driving the change in the education sector such as increasing globalization (fiercely competitive domestic and international student markets); greater global mobility (of academics, students and academic brands); an intensifying clamour for democratization of knowledge and access; and the emergence of disruptive digital technologies that drive innovations and offer leapfrogging opportunities. “These developments have important implications for the universities of the future. Successful universities of the future will not be limited by physical spaces or contracts. University learning spaces will be built collaboratively by traditional educational institutions, non-academic subject experts, technopreneurs and investors and the focus will be on the distribution of the ability to solve problems,” Nandan responded.
Earlier in the day, Professor P D Jose, Co-Chair of FoL 2018 and Faculty in the Strategy area at IIMB, welcomed the 300+ delegates – from industry and academia, deans, and directors, and chairpersons of educational institutes, and set the context for the conference. “The education sector is set for a major makeover. The twentieth-century model, characterized by intense faculty-student interactions in brick and mortar classrooms, is fast changing to one of need-based and asynchronous exchanges in a virtual space,” he said, adding that the conference will examine how to bridge the learning divide in the country and not let it go the way of the digital divide.
The Future of Learning conference is the first in the series of annual conferences alternating between IIM Bangalore and IIT Bombay for the next three years.
In his opening remarks, Prof. Deepak B Phatak, from IIT Bombay and Co-Chair of FoL 2018, highlighted disruption in the education sector and spoke of the need to bring the different silos together and focus on creative disruption.
Introducing the chief guest, Prof. Phatak focused on Nandan’s involvement in the education space through generous funding and ideation. “Nandan’s amazing energy, commitment and passion are an inspiration,” he added.
In his address, Prof. G Raghuram, Director, IIM Bangalore, said: “The emerging convergence of technologies, entrepreneurship, and risk capital can create new educational market places and radically transform the future of educational institutions and the future of education itself.”
Drawing from his recent visit to a Heads of Institutions conference at Singapore, Prof. Raghuram said the universities of the future must develop a multi-disciplinary and inter-disciplinary focus, provide access to quality education and use digital as an enabler.
Highlighting IIMB’s initiatives in this direction, such as the Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) programme in the field of management education, the IIMB director spoke of the collaboration between NASSCOM and IIMB in creating a learning platform by crowdsourcing content in the leadership domain for MSMEs, and announced the launch of the Centre for Teaching and Learning at IIM Bangalore, here today.
Centre for Teaching & Learning
The Centre for Teaching and Learning (CTL) at IIM Bangalore is being set up to understand evolving best practices of teaching and learning and to disseminate such understanding for increasing teaching effectiveness.
Launching the Centre, Prof. G Raghuram, Director, IIMB, said: “The Centre for Teaching and Learning will conduct teaching workshops for faculty and doctoral students, thus acting as a national resource for improving the standards of teaching in institutes of higher education.”
In his presentation, Prof. Sourav Mukherji, Chairperson of the newly-launched Centre for Teaching and Learning, offered an overview of the plans of the centre. “The Centre will also evolve measures to evaluate teaching performance and learning, and will focus on research in innovation in teaching.”
Academic Panel
The inauguration of the Centre for Teaching and Learning was preceded by an academic panel on challenges in technology-enabled education. The panel examined how new developments will change the landscape of higher learning and what implications this will have for the educationists and educational institutions.
Members of the academic panel, including Rishikesha T Krishnan, Director, IIM Indore, Shailendra Raj Mehta, President and Director, MICA, Ajit Parulekar, Director, Goa Institute of Management, and Neelu Rohmera, Director, IIM Sirmaur, agreed that while digitization promises to revolutionize pedagogical approaches regarding efficacy and effectiveness, these innovative approaches also pose new challenges.
For instance, it is still unclear if and how learning platforms will come together to gain insights into how learners learn. Several facets related to the pedagogical aspects of digital learning, such as personalized learning, online assessments and blended learning, are still not adequately researched or understood, and need plenty of work.
Technology and Policy Tracks
The technology track of the conference will focus on potentials and perils of emerging technologies in the context of digital learning. The rapid pace of technology changes and the interplay between entrepreneurship, technology and policy and their impacts also create both opportunities and challenges that need a closer examination.
The policy track will examine the role of public policy and the need for adapting the existing regulatory frameworks to benefit from the leapfrogging opportunities that innovations in educational technology provide. For example, given India’s own need to upskill its population and its potential to be low cost, high-quality educational hub for the world what should policymakers focus in the near term and midterm? How can the goals of accessibility, high quality and relevance be maintained without compromising innovation and enterprise? What new competencies should regulators develop and what roles should they play in helping traditional institutions to leverage the power of technology and adapt to digital learning?
Speakers and Panellists
The three-day conference on ‘Future of Learning’ brings leaders of higher educational institutions, educational policy makers, practitioners and L&D Technology providers on a single platform and aims to provoke thought, showcase innovation and share knowledge along three dimensions of the future of learning: Pedagogy, Policy and Technology.
The three-day conference will feature panellists and speakers including Anant Agarwal, CEO, EdX; Andrew Ng, Professor, Stanford University; Simon Nelson, CEO, Future Learn; Deepak B Phatak, Professor, IIT Bombay; G. Raghuram, Director, IIM Bangalore; R. Subrahmanyam, Additional Secretary (Technical Education), MHRD, GoI; Ronnie Screwvala, Co-Founder and Chairman, UpGrad; Amit Goyal, India Country Director, EdX; Mayank Kumar, Co-Founder and MD, UpGrad; Ishan Gupta, Managing Director, Udacity India; and Andrew Thangaraj, Professor, IIT Madras.