Stephen Downes' OLDaily tracks many of the important developments in online learning so it's worthwhile to hear what Stephen is forecasting for 2004. I'm especially interested in his predictions for higher education, "For all that, learning objects will come to the for in 2004 or shortly thereafter, but not as cogs in a centrally packaged learning design. Learning objects - or, as some will start calling them, learning resources - will begin to reach their potential outside the mainstream. When people who use informal learning - as much as 90 percent of learning, according to some estimates - the demand, and therefore the production, of learning objects will increase dramatically. Much to the displeasure of those who invested in such content technologies, the vast majority of learning resources will be free, and the internet will be an increasingly viable alternative to a traditional education. Good thing, because funding patterns for traditional education will not change: tuitions will rise, classes will be cut, and the minute independent certification becomes widespread (could be 2004, but probably later) the educational system will enter a full scale crisis from which it will not recover." I agree that universities and colleges will be fundamentally challenged by the availability of free educational resources. Also, the widespread international outsourcing of high-end white collar jobs to India, China, Hong Kong, Ireland, and other countries poses a new kind of competition for US graduates, a job-draining competition that will raise questions about the investment value of BA/MS/PhD degrees. JH ______
2004: The Turning Point In this article I base my projections not on stock prices, sales trends or focus group analysis. I base it on what I think - on what I feel, in the classic sense of the Idoru - is driving the hearts of those who will make the final decisions on the future of the internet, those who use it. By Stephen Downes, Stephen's Web, December 30, 2003
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