Get set: automation is coming to all corners of your university. The future of education will be more automated, interconnected, and immersive. So much so, that analysts predict that the adoption of more advanced tech in education will grow by $253.82 million over the next four years. It will better streamline administrative practices while plunging both students, faculty, and professors into the metaverse. In recent years, there’s been an increased focus on flashy front-facing automations like chatbots and contactless payments. Many institutions are also quietly under the hood, streamlining education workflow automation in back-office operations. But beyond optimizing the workload, we’re on the cusp of sweeping changes in education. Futurists are exploring the role automation will play in every nook, cranny, and corner of your campus. Here’s where you’ll find it in the coming years.
Automation is driving a new era in “hands-on” study
How will Zoom rooms evolve into the metaverse? The concept of a “field trip” falls away, as every day in the classroom becomes a fully interactive experience. Goodbye whiteboards and rows of chairs: seminar rooms will transform into vibrantly immersive historical moments. A teacher will serve as the tour guide to a band of student-avatars, but the world is so alive that they can notice small details and point them out to a friend. Instead of watching a video walkthrough of an architectural dig, students can bend down and get their digital hands dirty, unearthing pottery shards amongst the pixels. Automation technologies like artificial intelligence and machine learning will also partner up with the marvels of high-performance computing. Students will soon be able to run simulations that are, at present, only possible in the most exclusive labs. Universities will use these tools to test how medical implants interact with the complexities of human biology, explore the cosmos, or observe how slight alterations to human behavior can impact the planet’s climate. In EdScoop, one astrophysicist at Purdue celebrated advances in , where students now act like a “bomb squad,” toying with different variables in 3D to see, for themselves, how they impacted exploding stars. Currently, simulations like these can take days or weeks, while advances in computing will . Virtual reality headsets and greater access to supercomputers will allow students to run wildly complex simulations that’ll undeniably improve scientific discoveries in the future.
