Anant AgarwalInfluencer

CEO at edX
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When my daughter turned 13, I learned that she speaks a completely different
language than meher father, the MIT Professor. It is a digital language with two
sounds, a grunt and a silence. I call it teenlish. I now find that she and I
communicate best over text. Her responses are more immediate and we connect
instantly, and her sentences can run into a few words, a departure from our vocal
interactions. The new electronic intimacy is a phenomenon that has arrived with the
maturation of the millennial generation and its changing the way that people
interact all across the world.
This realization from my daughter, as well as my experiences as an MIT professor,
have taught me that the world of education must catch up with its students

changing needs; embracing technology and the millennial generations natural

predilections. In the 1700s, parents lectured their children at home. A century later,
one-room schoolhouses were born and teachers began lecturing their students.
Today, despite all of the worlds life-altering technologies, we are still largely using
the one-way lecture style, and lecture halls can be thousands of students strong.
Sure, the classroom has evolved by introducing textbooks, projectors, clickers, and
even tablets, but the way we educators interact with these digitally-advanced
students has evolved at a very slow pace. Its clear that we must adapt to how
students interact with technology. Simply handing someone a tablet isnt enough.
With the rise of MOOC learning, there are more options that allow students to learn
wherever they are, utilizing a computer and an Internet connection. And with these
new opportunities, we can build untold flexibility into educationfinally evolving
from the traditional model into something more fluid, global, immediate, inclusive,
adaptive, and scalable. The new model will open doors for learners who, until now,
had previously been shut out. After all, when you have the opportunity to teach
people all across the world, why must we limit ourselves by classroom size?
This flexibility creates great potential for us to unbundle higher education. We can
unbundle the time it takes to get a degree by creating more flexible options
perhaps a freshman year taught online, then two years on-campus, and a final year
out in the workforce or spent completing an independent online study. Unbundling
can truly transform the way we approach education, and ensure that each and every
student has the tailored educational experience he or she wants. But to make it
work effectively, we need to open up new channels through college admissions.
When it comes to higher education, the admissions process has adhered to the
same relative process for the better part of a century based on grades,
standardized testing, interviews, and extracurricular activities. For most, this system
offers a consistent measure of data, so its not hard to understand why it has
endured.
For other students, however, this process presents an insurmountable challenge that
has been inadequately addressed over the years. What about students who are
bright, but do not test well? What about learners who cannot afford coaching fees

for standardized tests? Or those that can make the grades but do not have the
resources to quit working and still pay for school? Or, for those who want to go to an
American school but are half a world away?
Thankfully, the education world is beginning to address these obstructions. Over the
years, some schools have been experimenting with a wider variety of criteria for
which students can be admitted. There are schools, like New York University, that do
not require standardized tests like SATs for admission. This is an incredible
advantage for students who perform well in classes but poorly on standardized tests.
Many schools offer financial aid, and Stanford University just announced
animportant change to their policy of admittance for students whose homes are
under a certain income level. President Obama even proposed that we make two
years of community college free for American students.
Flexibility in admission policies and financial aid packages open the door for
students who would otherwise not have the opportunity to pursue higher education.
Students can take AP-level courses online and then take the CollegeBoard exams
that will apply toward their freshman year. They can also take college-level classes
and prepare themselves for the workload to come.
Credit, of course, is still king. MOOC learning offers many opportunities for personal
growth and fulfillment, but the opportunity to take rigorous open online courses for
credit will open doors for many more people. And now, students are able to apply
successful open online learning on the edX platform to on-campus course credit.
Thats the goal of the Global Freshman Academy, edXs new partnership with
Arizona State University, for example.
The move towards credit-bearing opportunities creates a new flexibility that has not
been seen before in higher education. Students who might otherwise not have a
chance to attend college gain another entry point they previously did not have. They
can take online courses and pay for that credit only if they are successful. The
credit, when accumulated, can amount to an entire freshman year. In what we hope
will build upon the model set by the new partnership of edX with Arizona State
University, other universities will also begin to offer credit for open online learning.
The result will be an open college admittance option that does not require
standardized testing, will allow students the flexibility to work full-time or care for
their families, and study from anywhere in the worldall while receiving credit for
their freshman year classes. With this new, aptitude-based system the geographic,

time-based, and testing barriers come down: if the student can do the work, they
get the credit.
As with all other technological advancements of our time, the future of education
will largely be about flexibility and adapting to the changing needs of students. No
two people are alike and no two learning paths are exactly the same.
Just as my daughter has taught me that there are other ways we can communicate
effectively, so too are modern students teaching educators how we can improve
access to learning. We should offer as many opportunities for learning as we can,
and the more entrances we can open to higher education, the better we can make
the world as a whole.
What changes do you think should be made to make education more
accessible?