Technological Development in University Education

The development of information technology is shaping the way the future of uni-versity-level education is orchestrated. Some key technological developments of this rapid transformation include massive open online courses (MOOCs), collaboration material in the cloud, learning in virtual reality, and learning with social media. In addition, gamification may be employed to engage stakeholders in a way that traditional or regular interaction would not allow for.

moocs. Massive open online courses (MOOCs) started with a number of U.S.

universities filming their lectures online and making them freely accessible to anyone. Soon thereafter, materials began to emerge also for other educational levels; for instance, Khan Academy provides various online lectures on a number of topics, mostly from the primary school level to the high school level.

Interest-ingly, however, MOOCs have not completely disrupted education. The typical MOOC student is still today an educated U.S. or EU male (Figure 3); that is, peo-ple who did not previously access higher education are still not accessing it to a large extent, even when content is available.

Fig. 3. The typical MOOC student is still today an educated U.S. or EU male [16].

the clouD. With digital emergence, materials have started moving to the cloud. The old model in which knowledge was printed in the form of textbooks has started to shift to a model in which textbooks and other materials can be downloaded or accessed directly online. This way, knowledge can be constantly updated. Depending on the setup, collaborative creation of study materials can also be possible, for example, together with the industry.

VirtuAl reAlity. Enabled by new display tech, faster graphics processors, and higher bandwidths, virtual reality (VR) headsets started to find their way to shop shelves in 2015. Their popularity is still an open question, but the ambitions are high. However, if a VR platform becomes widely successful, it seems likely that it will also play a role in the classroom. Teaching in VR could be comparable, for instance, to visiting a science exhibition, just without the need for any actual physical traveling. Explaining certain complex concepts, especially physical pro-cesses in, for example, a manufacturing plant, could be much easier, as students could play and explore with the concepts in a 3D world, instead of needing to imagine them. Potentially, this could provide the means for highly interactive learning through industry–student–university cooperation.

sociAl meDiA. Using social media, it is possible to build learning commu-nities, where, for example, students, researchers, and industry professionals can introduce themselves, converse with one another, ask questions, debate, reflect

on the materials and their learning, brainstorm together for answers, and take polls on learning progress. In addition, wikis could be used to build learning ma-terials in collaboration with all other stakeholders.

gAmificAtion. Many people love to engage with a game: an addictive game can guide a user to certain behavior by giving a reward for it. This kind of instant feedback has been often lacking in traditional education, where students may get feedback in the worst case only as a grade for the exam log after actual studying.

Educational games have the potential to change this, providing feedback and increasing student engagement and motivation. The challenge lies in creating gamified approaches that engage all stakeholders.

3 Methodology

As part of the research for this paper, we contacted a number of leading experts (Table 1) in academia to discuss how they, as the frontrunners of this change, perceived the future of education. In our quest for knowledge and better under-standing, we employed in-depth semistructured interviews with a predefined outline for the discussion. The interview structure was not followed rigorously, but it was used to provide a good framework for guided discussions that allowed the researchers to better come into contact with naturally occurring data [17].

Due to the exploratory nature of this topic, special concern was given to the inter-viewer’s language to allow more room for sensitivity for the ideas and meanings of the interviewees [18]. This was particularly important because the researcher who defines the concepts is rarely able to control the meanings particularly well.

The interviews were recorded, and the researchers jotted down notes during the interviews. The interviews lasted from 40 to 60 minutes, which allowed for in-depth discussion of the topic. Some interviewees had requested the outline to be sent beforehand, which we complied with. The general structure of the inter-views was as follows:

• Which technologies do you see as playing a major role in how university edu-cation develops?

• In the future, technology will enable making large parts or even all university degree studies online. What, in your opinion, would be the main benefits and drawbacks of that?

• How do you think online education would affect the quality of education?

• What are the main prerequisites for a person to be able to study for a univer-sity degree? (e.g., MIT courses are available online for free, but they do not reach people living in poor countries.)

• What is the main purpose of university studies now and in the future?

• What would an ideal university be like? Which purposes would it serve? Who would study there? How would it function in terms of teaching?

Table 1. List of interviewees and their academic associations.

Name Title/Organization Affiliations

Tuija Pulkkinen Vice President (Research and

Innovation) at Aalto University Present duties as vice president include responsibility for the Aalto University research and innovation activities and related services Hannu Simola Professor of Sociology of

Education at the University of Helsinki

Member of the board of the Doctoral Programme of Comparative Research on Educational Policy, Economy and Assessment (CREPEA)

Member or the board of the Finnish Graduate School in Education and Learning (FiGSEL–KASVA) Head of the Research Group focusing on New Policy, Politics and Governance of Education (KUPOLI) Martti Mäntylä Professor of Information

Technology at Aalto University Focus area in applying ICT in

industrial production, often termed the Industrial Internet

Ahti Salo Professor of System Analysis at

Aalto University Member of the Strategic Foresight for R&I Policy in Horizon 2020 working group

Markku

Saarelainen University Lecturer at the University of Eastern Finland