The Spotification of Education

Educational playlists will fuel student centered learning

The new education consumer

Here’s a cool idea. Students will have the power to build their own technical certification from an a la carte menu. We know that today’s student lives the ‘Spotified’ life every day choosing which music, news, and food they consume with precision. I foresee many students making their way successfully in this same manner. This may be a complement to the typical college degree or a replacement. Currently a degree is like a vinyl record where you are forced to pay for the entire album and get 2 good songs and 8 so-so songs that you want to skip. I’m confident that industry needs, financial forces, and EdTech innovations are going to offer some incredible pathways to change the current ‘vinyl’ education paradigm.

Examples of education selection

• AWS certificate in cloud architecture
• Bootcamp GIS certificate with SME instructors promoting a career in GIS
• Coursera technical certificates
• LinkedIn learning certificates in many business areas
• Bootcamp Digital certificate in digital marketing

Peer 2 Peer applied classes from practitioners in geographic information systems (GIS)

This is just a sample of platforms that are quickly curating content that is very applied and industry driven. Compare this to the higher-ed model of content development which often takes 2–3 years to launch a class and must be more general in nature to have a longer lifespan. So it’s evident that students will gravitate towards the more nimble sources of tech knowledge as they are doing now with Coursera having sales up by over 500% with a pandemic aided audience.

Higher-Ed and industry partnerships

A report by GSV Ventures says that digital learning will more than double to a $1T industry worldwide over the next 6 years. This means lots of people jumping into the game and creating educational content offered as microcredentials in higher education. Schools may create some of this content themselves. However the majority of it will be done commercially because of better agility. This will promote many more private sector partnerships that will follow the Spotified…