Four years ago Harvard Business School Professor Clayton Christensen predicted that online education would take off slowly and then hit everyone by surprise: the S-curve effect. And indeed, while it initially grew slowly, online education has exploded over the past several years. According to the 2010 Sloan Survey of Online Learning, approximately 5.6 million students took at least one web-based class during the fall 2009 semester, which marked a 21% growth from the previous year. As for K-12 learning, more than 3 million students took an online course in 2009. That’s up from 45,000 in 2000. Experts predict that online education could reach 14 million in 2014.
Consider a recent Economist article featuring Bill Gates’s educational poster child: Khan Academy, founded by Salman Khan in 2006. Khan’s business model is simple, yet impactful. As The Economist noted, it flips education on its head. Rather than filling the day with lectures and requiring students to complete exercises after school, Khan focuses on classroom exercises throughout the day and allows students to download more lectures after school. When students arrive at their Silicon Valley suburb classroom with their white MacBooks, they begin their day doing various online learning exercises. The teacher, aware of what her students are working on based on her own monitor screen, then approaches students and provides one-on-one feedback and mentoring, tailoring her message to students’ particular learning paces and needs.
But Khan goes beyond the computer and customized feedback. It emphasizes critical thinking and idea creation, where real learning occurs, and downplays rote lecture learning. Active problem solving makes learning much more fun and engaging for students. As The Economist notes, students at institutions like Khan can huddle together and solve math problems around their laptops as if they were trading baseball cards or marbles.
Of course not everyone has warmly embraced the online education movement, namely teachers’ unions. But the union’s concern — that teachers will become less relevant — is misplaced. First, online education isn’t the one and only teaching tool. The Sloan study indicated that the best teaching often occurs under a blended model of online learning coupled with real face time. So there will always be a need for teachers. Second, online education integration will help teachers make a more impactful influence on students. In fact, Gates, Khan, and teachers at the academy argue that online education can liberate teachers, allowing them to engage in more creative and influential one-on-one mentoring.
Other concerns relate to education quality. But integrating an online and lecture approach can actually result in students getting a higher quality education. Education Department data from last year reported that “Students in online conditions performed modestly better, on average, than those learning the same material through traditional face-to-face instruction.” A blended approach combines the socialization opportunities the classroom provides with the enhanced active learning features that online learning offers. This is why former Governors Jim Hunt (North Carolina Democrat) and Jeb Bush (Florida Republican) are travelling around the country encouraging school districts to take advantage of online learning tools.
Part of the challenge with revamping America’s educational system resides in well-intentioned people who have focused on answering the wrong question. Nothing matters if we find the right answer to the wrong question. As Clayton Christensen and Michael Horn argued in Disrupting Class, insufficient money, the teachers’ unions, and large classroom size, all relevant issues, are not the root cause of our schools’ troubles. The real problem lies in the effects standardized education has had on a student’s internal and external motivation. As the authors point out, “When education is well aligned with one’s stronger intelligences, aptitudes, or styles, understanding can come more easily and with greater enthusiasm.” And as the Khan Academy has demonstrated, teachers can serve as professional coaches and content architects to help students progress in ways that they never could under most current models. Students display much more enthusiasm when they can self-direct their learning paths.
A greater selection in course offerings will also motivate students and improve their educational experience. Many school districts in small, rural, and urban markets that do not have access to the breath of education available in more resource plenty areas will pull humanities, arts, economics, Chinese, and quality A.P. courses into their offerings to satisfy students’ unmet needs. We predict the online education movement will advance the same way that disruptive innovators have succeeded: by serving markets that are too costly or impossible for the incumbents to pursue, and then gradually moving “up-market.” Targeting non-consumers creates less backlash from teachers’ unions and administrators, and could even generate student referrals from incumbents themselves.
As we move into the 21st century, what American students most need are the tools and skills that will help them compete for the increasingly sophisticated jobs of tomorrow. Only then can we maximize the rising generation’s potential, providing the talent necessary to keep America prosperous and competitive in the years to come.