‘Youth are the future of innovation & creativity’, says SP Jain’s Silvia Vianello

The meaning of receiving an education in today’s world can be very vast. It defines your personality and brings out your personal talents or gifts that you’re born with but not aware of due to the lack of exposure. Each of us is good at something, but in order to believe that, you have to know about it first.

Studying, reading, and learning about new things from people, technology, schools and institutions helps you define what you do best and explore your areas of interest. It helps you gain more knowledge and sometimes you just get to study things because you’re curious about it or because you heard it somewhere. All of this helps you give back to society and its people.

Now in order to spark new ideas in the minds of the place we call the ‘world’ is actually just a mere combination of all our thoughts, beliefs, facts, truths and most importantly opinions. And education truly plays a role in influencing these opinions. It decides the rights and wrongs and therefore the next steps, i.e. what is acceptable? What should be done? And how?

To the general public that system is known as the education system. In previous years, being educated was a privilege but today it is a necessity. Everything that was created in the past is today becoming redundant or has lost its value, all because of the new technology and innovations taking place around the world. Years ago, there was no such thing as a smartphone, but today you cannot live without one. Similarly, the same goes with education. There is something new to learn with every little thing that you see around you. Whether it’s your phone, where you get all updates on the news or a book that contains knowledge about a specific subject you prefer, there are different ways to grab and process this education in order to make it interesting and captivating.

Education began with linear education, from “People to People.” One person learns from the other, and teaches the next through their experiences and learnings. We often determine this person to be our Guru/Teacher, someone who teaches us the meaning of things that have kept us in the loop. All this type of education that takes place in the classroom has been the most feasible form of education and will continue to be in the coming years due to its simplicity and presence of the individual learning around you. It’s easy to ask your teacher anything by means of proper communication when in doubt. But what makes linear education even more interesting is combining linear education with the other forms of education, for example, enhanced education.

Enhanced education is a form of education where you combine knowledge from “People to people and then use means of technology to spread this knowledge on a global basis.” Technology plays a major role in this process of enhanced education, where people with similar interests from all over the world come together to share their thoughts, experiences, beliefs and opinions in order to create shared and valued knowledge and solve discrepancies, errors and doubts in times of need. You don’t have to wait to learn something new, just because your teacher isn’t available or present when you want to learn. Rather, with enhanced knowledge, you learn in your own time and at your own pace. Types of enhanced learnings include e-learning, courses of your choice that you can take up online from experts of particular fields sitting anywhere in the world. When we say this, it sparks a curiosity to learn more, but still people are in doubt to take up such methods of enhanced learning as they have been taught to study, write, explain and derive answers to or from people or want physical and practical field knowledge. There is a very common statement said by industry professionals, “You wouldn’t know what to do until you’re actually present on the field. Studying from a book is very different than actually being there at the moment and taking real-life decisions.” And so, this idea brought the new system of augmented education.

Augmented education is a system that demands a hands-on approach to real-life situations. It helps to explain the subject with the help of visual representation of the situation and stimulate responses in order to study and test students as to how they would react in that particular situation. These simulations are descriptive and put you in real-life roles, where you have to think from the position and role you are given in order to perform your tasks. Such forms of education use technology, augmented reality and computerized robots as professors to teach you something new and to record your responses and study the outcomes of the situations. Such a practical approach towards education was never imagined in the 1950’s when computers, AI and machine learning didn’t even exist. What you study and how you study has completely changed today.

What if we told you that all the 3 systems of education mentioned above are combined into one system called the circulatory system taught by a particular institution? Would you be interested to study real-time business scenarios through people teaching people, people learning through technology and technology influencing the decisions of people by changing different situations based on your environment? At this circular institution, technology will train you, you will influence technology and you will decide your future. The last step of circular education will be people training robots to train other people using technology. In order words, we will need more and more in the future to train not only people but also the technology itself to train others in a more effective way.

Today’s youth are the future of education, innovation and creativity. The ones who from now on will decide what is acceptable and viable in business. And for this reason, it is very important to first change and reorder the system that influences the minds of our youth worldwide, using all the potential types of education. To create a bomb, you still have to light a match, and this education pattern does just that; it lights the match to spark new ideas in your thoughts through these different educational processes. These systems of education will surely lead to better employability, better preparation of a future-ready workforce and a better expectation on investments in education.

With time, everything has to evolve or else it will lose its importance and something better will take its place. This B-school is the better and futuristic system of tomorrow and so we would like to know your thoughts on how you would like to see your university and its study pattern. Put it into words and express yourself and we’ll work towards executing your thoughts into reality. Start typing and start inspiring, now it’s your turn to change the future the way you want.