The Seven Futures of Online Education

In just a few years, online learning will attain full scale in higher education as an integral part of the learning experience for most students, and it will enter the mainstream of K-12 education. While the first era in the history of online education was focused on providing access, the second era could be defined by improving quality -- not just for online education but for all education. This is happening within an important larger context: Education is entering the age of cybersymbosis - irretrievably dependent on digital technologies. This is not a fad, a niche, or even a trend; it is education's future. This presentation will help attendees understand how this happened -- how online learning became the leading wedge in cyberizing education, and how redefined knowledge, redistributed access, and renegotiated authority have shifted the foundations on which education has been based for centuries. It will also explain what will happen next: education's futures will be shaped by various viewpoints (Free Market Rules, Free Learning Rules, Standards Rule, Cyberdystopia, Steady As She Goes) whose influences would be disastrous in the extreme because they advocate narrow, oversimplified outcomes -- but they could be beneficial in moderation. Education's key stakeholders, including online education practitioners, need a better way to view the future, one that integrates multiple perspectives into a conceptual framework which helps them create their own future by using the cyberization of education to improve it: Education Improves -- the sixth future. The confluence of education's rising importance as an essential social good and the cyberization of society offers a spectacular opportunity to improve education. The presentation will also discuss some effective strategies for using online education to improve teaching and learning, revitalize education, and move toward a possible, if distant, seventh future: one where everyone's education truly matters.