FIKR 6: 21st Century Student

To be honest with you all, this is a topic that is close to my heart and although most of the stuff they were talking about is exactly what I tell my students and at the conferences I’ve spoken at in the past, but it is always good to hear people who share the same views and at bigger occassions than in my tiny little computer lab or in a round table discussion.

The scenario was that a child who is born in 2000 will be going to university/college in 2017, and the big question was, what will he need to do to survive in our rapidly changing world once entering university and eventually leaving into the ‘real world’?

Where Are We Now?

Just to give an idea of what the level of education is like in the Middle East region, Dr. Mona Mourshed from McKinsey spoke about Arab students results in the TIMSS examinations.

The Trend in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) is an international exam held every four years, with the most recent exams this year,2007. Over 60 countries participated with students from 4th, 8th and 11th grades all sitting exams in general mathematics and science. The highest scoring nation in the 2003 TIMSS exams was Singapore (the TIMSS 2007 results will be published in December 2008).

The Arab countries performances were all below the US average.

Less than 1% of the highest scoring students in the Arab countries scored the Singapore average.

Universities and employers in the Arab world also have their complaints, that 50% of school graduates do not have the necessary hard skills (Maths, Arabic, English) to succeed whilst over 60% of school graduates don’t have the necessary soft skills (Leadership qualities, Problem Solving, Team work etc..).

Good teachers lead to good performances from students

A way to combat these poor results is to raise the quality of teachers in the schools. Mona Mourshed pointed out that many teachers in Arab countries tend to come from the bottom 20% of university graduates whereas countries like Finland and South Korea only accept teachers who are in the top 10% and top 5% of their classes respectively.

Teaching in the Arab World has become the occupation of those who cannot find a job in their specific degree area. What is needed now is to “restore professionalism” into teaching.

The Power of Web 2.0 to Education

The potential of the internet is growing massively everyday, with more and more people gaining access to the internet via faster connections.

With this rise of internet users, the amount of content on websites has grown dramatically, and more interestingly, and is free. The idea of selling knowledge over the internet sounds absolutely absurd to many users nowadays, making it much unlikely to succeed.

This growing number of internet users also created the phenomena of ‘Web 2.0′ or what some like to call the “social web” where information is shared and most importantly generated by the users via certain applications such as Wikipedia, Facebook, Flickr, Digg etc..

Harden Tibbs, Chief Executive Officer of Synthesys Strategic Consulting Limited (UK) believes that a traditional and fixed curriculum will only graduate students who are inadequent or will struggle with our rapidly changing world. 

Fixed curriculums are based on anticipation of what the future holds, and with the rapid change we are seeing everyday, the future has become very difficult to predict and anticipate.

As a solution, e-learning systems that run on a social interface should be developed so to let the student adapt and personalise their education and concentrate on areas of strength and soft skills to prepare themselves for the work areas and fields that haven’t been invented yet.

 Adding to this point, Dr. John Palfrey from Havard Law School, USA believes that students must become “sensitive to change” to survive and excel in the future. He also feels that we are already feeling the transformation in education caused by the internet where many students nowadays would firstly search information via search engines like Google and Ask Jeeves opposed to visiting the library.

**On this topic I must mention a school visit I conducted a couple of weeks ago to one of Bahrain’s Secondary Girls Schools, to evaluate an ICT project on the three R’s (Reduce, Reuse and Recycle) and when I asked the students where they got all the information, they all said Google. When I asked them if they visited the library, one answered “Why should we? Everything is on Google!”

Enpowering Students and Saving The Planet

During the panel, predictions were made on what areas will students in the future be working in. The Vice President of the Royal University for Women (Bahrain), Siham Al-Suwaigh, believes that the growing concerns surrounding global warming and other environmental issues will open up a great market in enviromental research and development to be filled with newly graduated students in the future.

 A surprise addition to the panel was the young Abdulaziz Al-Taraizouni, a Saudi studying at King Fahad University and heads an IT society at his university. He compares the education of old as the obtainment of “pure knowledge and nothing else” whereas modern education is looking ahead and is more concerned with the job market. He supported his fellow panelists in that students must gain the skills needed to adapt to all changes.

The society he heads is the ‘IT Leaders Society’ which is a society that encourages the students to find new and innovative ways to use and create technology. He finds that the society has given so much freedom for the students and much room to grow, develop and find themselves with the final product being the amount of productivity the students show in their work..