EDUCATION 4.

P R E P A R E D B Y : M R . C L Y D E D R E X L E R I. T A P A W A N

What is Education 4.0?

Famous buzzword among educationists today is “Education 4.0”, but do educators really
understand Education 4.0? To understand Education 4.0, it is important to understand the “IR
4.0”.

First we need to define what is IR 4.0 or the Industrial Revolution 4.0.

Schwab (2016) provides an example that helps to understand how the industrial revolutions
changed across time.

During the 1st IR, water and steam were used to mechanize production.

During the 2nd IR, electric power was used to create mass production.

During the 3rd IR, electronics and information technology were used to automate
production.

The 4th IR is beyond an enhancement of the 3rd IR, in which the advancement of new
technologies blurs the lines between the physical, digital and biological worlds.

The IR 4.0 affects not only the business, governance and the people, it also affects
education as well, thus the name Education 4.0 came to existence.

Now, What is Education 4.0?

Education 4.0 is a response to the needs of IR4.0 where human and technology are aligned
to enable new possibilities.

Fisk (2017) explains that the new vision of learning promotes learners to learn not only
skills and knowledge that are needed but also to identify the source to learn these skills and
knowledge.
THERE ARE NINE TRENDS RELATED TO EDUCATION 4.0 (FISK, 2017).

1. Learning can be taken place anytime anywhere. e-Learning tools offer great opportunities for
remote, self-paced learning. Flipped classroom approach also plays a huge role as it allows
interactive learning to be done in class, while the theoretical parts to be learned outside the class
time.

2. Learning will be personalized to individual students. They will be introduced to harder tasks
only after a certain mastery level is achieved. More practices will be provided if the instructors see
a need in it. Positive reinforcements are used to promote positive learning experience and boost
students’ confidence about their own academic abilities.

3. Students have a choice in determining how they want to learn. Although the learning outcomes
of a course are pre-set by the institutions/bodies in charge of the curriculum, students are still free
to choose the learning tools or techniques that they prefer. Among the options that lecturers can
adopt to enable students to be creative in their learning.

4. Students will be exposed to more projectbased learning. Students are required to apply their
knowledge and skills in completing a couple of short term projects. By involving in the projects,
they are practicing their organizational, collaborative and time management skills which are useful
in their future academic careers

5. Students will be exposed to more hands on learning through experience such as internships,
mentoring projects and collaborative projects. The advancement of the technology enables the
learning of certain domains effectively, thus making more room for acquiring skills that involve
human knowledge and face-to-face interaction.

6. Students will be exposed to data interpretation in which they are required to apply their
theoretical knowledge to numbers and use their reasoning skills to make inferences based on logic
and trends from given sets of data.

7. Students’ factual knowledge can be assessed during the learning process, while the application
of the knowledge can be tested when they are working on their projects.

8. Student’s opinion will be considered in designing and updating the curriculum. Their inputs
help the curriculum designers maintain curriculum contemporariness, up to date and usefulness.
9. Students will become more independent in their own learning, thus forcing teachers to assume
a new role as facilitators who will guide the students through their learning process.

It is clearly that Education 4.0 will lead our students to become innovative, creative and ready to
the rapid changes in to our society and industry.

How does Education 4.0 benefit teaching staff?

Education 4.0 empowers teachers and educators by giving them tools that make their jobs
easier. Teachers better communicate with their student but more efficiently and quickly.
Education 4.0 is built for teachers to feel empowered and be better at their jobs, which in turn
improves student learning outcomes.

How does Education 4.0 benefit students?

Students are the ultimate stakeholders in any educational ecosystem and the key
beneficiary everyone is working for in the educational ecosystem in general.

Through the use of technology, students have better access and relationships with their
various other stakeholders in the system, from better communication with teachers, more allied
goals with parents, and management and administration also find it easier to help the student
overall.

Education 4.0 also makes learning more accessible

HOW?

From using dynamic teaching material like images and video to keep students interested
to having learning materials be accessible more easily to students across devices and platforms to
even students being able to log in any time and from anywhere to learn at their own pace.

PREFERENCE OF A 21ST CENTURY LEARNER

The present students aged between 18 to 23 years old and they belong to the Generation -
Z (Gen Z) who are so revolutionized by technology. The learning preference of the Gen Z students
are different students from the previous generation as they are more hands-on and directly involved
in the learning process.
BECOMING A 21ST CENTURY TEACHER

Teachers need to relearn and equip themselves with the digital tools to meet the learning preference
of the Gen Z students. There are many digital tools available online that instructors can choose
from.