Coding as an Essential Skill in the Twenty-First Century
The pace of technological innovation has been felt across all industries and digital literacy is becoming a key central skill that is important to include in the education system to give employment seekers their best chance in securing the jobs of the fut
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Coding as an Essential Skill in the Twenty-First Century Raman Nambiar
The pace of technological innovation has been felt across all industries, and digital literacy is becoming a key central skill that is important to include in the education system to give employment seekers their best chance at securing the jobs of the future. The way in which the education system itself has been affected by technology is also equally important to consider ensuring that the education system makes the best use of technology to maximize learning opportunities. The use of cutting-edge technology has also been adopted in areas such as qualification storage and smart contracts by utilizing blockchain and distributed ledger applications. Alternative student payment mechanisms have also been explored, allowing access to learning resources for a new segment of the population that has no access to traditional banking facilities.
Education Today The two major areas of education—school and college/university—have seen a significant change over the past decade. Both have experienced a more general shift toward vocational skills, and a large amount of funding has been redirected toward ensuring that the content taught leads more directly to current jobs and general employment opportunities. There has also been a shift toward self-directed learning and the “flipped classroom” where the bulk of the theoretical content is learned at home or by oneself and
R. Nambiar (B) Gerudio, 10 York Street, Sydney, NSW 2000, Australia e-mail: [email protected] © Asian Development Bank 2020 B. Panth and R. Maclean (eds.), Anticipating and Preparing for Emerging Skills and Jobs, Education in the Asia-Pacific Region: Issues, Concerns and Prospects 55, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-7018-6_29
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the other, more engaged learning is conducted in a face-to-face classroom environment. This has also introduced the complexity of self-paced learning, which aims to tailor the pace and content of the curriculum to an individual’s ability. These movements are still very new, and, although extensively adopted, it is far too early to gauge their subsequent success or failure.
Issues and Challenges Online Learning The introduction of online learning content has taken longer to adopt than initially projected. And, there are still relatively few exceptional examples of online content delivery replacing face-to-face delivery; but certainly, access to learning resources has dramatically increased. The amount of online learning content available in traditional forms and media such as video has given rise to a new breed of learning content curators who make content available for microskills ranging up to full 3–4-year courses. Massive open online courses (MOOCs) were initially rejected by traditional universities as a poor choice of learning platform in comparison to what a university experience could offer, but this trend has also changed, with major universities now working in conjunction with MOOCs and exploring ways to blend the offerings
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