Teacherless Education
by Thomas Frey
In the video titled "Teacherless Education," Thomas Frey, executive director of The Da Vinci Institute, explores the concept of teacherless education as a significant future trend. He discusses how traditional educational models may not effectively engage today's learners, focusing particularly on the static nature of college curricula such as Economics 101.
Key Points Discussed:
- Engagement through Storytelling: Frey argues that if core economic principles were creatively presented by movie producers or game developers, they could become much more engaging than in typical classroom settings. This approach could transform dry content into something digestible and memorable through competition and entertainment.
Teacher Dependency: The speaker highlights the challenges faced in global educational initiatives, particularly noting a conversation with a Google executive regarding teacher reluctance in Africa. This indicates that over-reliance on teachers can create barriers to education.
Fluid Learning Environments: Despite the issues presented, Frey acknowledges the ongoing necessity for teachers in teaching dynamic subjects like Ruby on Rails, indicating that there are contexts in which teacher involvement is crucial.
Da Vinci Coders Program: As part of his discussion, Frey promotes The Da Vinci Institute's immersive Da Vinci Coders program, which is an 11-week transformational experience. This program emphasizes mentorship by industry professionals and student engagement through newsletters and local events. He highlights that expert involvement every week significantly enhances the learning experience and fosters student success.
The video concludes with Frey emphasizing the importance of evolving educational models that move beyond traditional teaching to embrace more engaging and accessible forms of learning, particularly relevant in light of contemporary educational challenges and opportunities.
00:00:04.660
For those of you who don't know me, my name is Thomas Frey. I am the executive director of The Da Vinci Institute, and we have a program called Da Vinci Coders, which many of you have probably heard about by now. Back in February of this year, I was in Istanbul where I gave a talk that included a discussion on the topic of teacherless education. I pointed to this as one of the future trends.
00:00:20.710
I looked into the static amount of information that is typically taught in a college course, like Econ 101, which is a standard course offered in virtually every college across the country. If you took the information from Econ 101 and handed it off to a movie producer, they would come back with something far more interesting and entertaining than what is currently taught in classrooms. Similarly, if you gave that information to a game developer, they would present it through a different lens and produce something that's far more engaging and entertaining. This idea of creating a competition around Econ 101 could help compress this information into something that is more digestible, engaging, and memorable than what is taught today.
00:01:05.350
I find this concept really interesting. After I spoke about teacherless education at this event, I was approached by an executive at Google, who is responsible for much of the continent of Africa. He mentioned that Google is very interested in teacher education, as they want to educate Africa, but they face challenges because teachers are reluctant to go there. This was a revealing moment for me because if we continue to rely solely on teachers for everything we want to learn, it creates a significant barrier. However, not everything is static information. The world of Ruby on Rails and coding, for instance, is very fluid, which implies that teachers still play a vital role in that setting.
00:02:34.850
With our Da Vinci Coders program, we have developed a very synergistic environment aimed at aligning all the elements necessary to improve the chances of student success. It is an 11-week immersive program that we describe as a transformative, life-changing experience. Each participant is assigned an industry mentor, and industry experts come in every Wednesday to engage with the students. We also send out newsletters to keep students informed about events happening in the area to enhance their involvement. I wanted to familiarize you with our Da Vinci Coders program as we will discuss it further during the panel discussion that follows. Thank you very much.