why is innovation important in education essay

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What is innovation in education and why it’s important?

Let’s talk about innovation in education, discuss a few examples, and find out why this focus on innovation education is important..

In a recent post, we explored  innovative teaching strategies  and how educators can deploy these strategies in the classroom. Let’s talk a bit more about innovation such as what it is and more specifically innovation in education. Why this focus on innovation education? Skill gaps.

As teachers, our goal is to educate students. Educated students are then able to advance their education further – to get whatever degree or certification they need – to eventually succeed in a career that they find rewarding and give back to their community.

One of the key challenges employers face today is that their employees are struggling to meet the challenges of ever-changing skills requirements. In fact, a Gartner  skills gaps analysis  found that 64% of managers don’t believe their employees can keep pace with the evolving skills needed while 70% of employees don’t believe they have mastered the skills needed for the job they have.

What does the skills gap have to do with innovation in education? Well, let’s first unpack what innovation in education even means.  

What is Innovation in Education? 

Innovation is one of those words we like to throw around whenever possible. To  innovate means  to make changes or do something a new way. To innovate does not require you to invent. Baked into innovation are creativity and adaptability.

Innovation in education isn’t a specific term with fixed definitions. The spirit of innovation education is an openness to looking with fresh eyes at problems and to address them in different, new ways. It is a recognition that we don’t have all the answers and are open to new approaches to improve such as methods of knowledge transfer with innovative teaching strategies.

Innovation in education can be:

• Recognizing that students are better served by a  flipped classroom  where they watch lectures at home and complete assignments in the classroom.
• Introducing more technology in the classroom to create a  blended classroom  where students experience technology as they would in the real world.
• Providing greater ways to facilitate clearer and  better communication  between school districts’ parents with powerful video tools.

Innovation in education comes from identifying problems, watching and learning from others, to develop new methods to address these problems, and iterating on them when these experiments don’t necessarily give the results you need.

Why is Innovation Important in Education? 

Charles Darwin never said , “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is most adaptable to change.” Regardless, let’s consider that a moment.

It is nearly impossible to predict or keep pace with the rate of change in today’s workplace. Accepting that, we can then agree that perhaps more important than the knowledge we have is the ability to adapt and evolve.

How can we teach a student to adapt? Well, in most industries, the catalyst of change is innovation. There are always improvements to be made. Innovation education helps prepare students for a dynamic workplace by providing them opportunities to develop skills such as creativity, adaptability, and resilience.

As educators, we can leverage innovation in education to improve student outcomes from a purely academic standpoint as well as to develop those  soft skills  that students need to succeed in life. We can also introduce more and more technology that students will need to be comfortable with overtime.

What are Examples of Innovation in Education? 

As we’ve already started to see, innovation in education can come in many forms. Remember, it is not just introducing new technology into the classroom. It can be a new method of teaching for a specific project or topic.

• Project-Based Learning  (PBL)  – Help students identify a real-world problem and develop a solution for it. Introduce a PBL-unit as part of a larger lesson where students can exercise their creative thinking, problem-solving, and collaboration with other students.
• Blended Learning –  Blending learning  combines online learning with traditional classroom learning. Students must become comfortable with online tools and using the internet to contribute to their learning. A blended learning approach gives students the ability to discover how best to use tools that they will rely heavily on in their professional lives.
• EdTech – Educational technology (edtech) typically refers to any software, application or service developed to enhance education. We must be careful not to go too far into the deep-end but introducing technology in the classroom is important. Innovative classroom technologies often mirror the innovations outside of education. So, the more students engage with technologies in the classroom, the better prepared they will be to engage with and through technology in the workplace.

How to Adopt Innovation with EdTech Platforms?

As we mentioned above, innovation education does not have to mean introducing technology into the classroom. However, educational technology certainly has its role in innovation in education. Sometimes edtech facilitates innovation in education by making possible what wasn’t possible before. Think about how schools were able to maintain any sort of continuity during the pandemic. Schools and teachers innovated by offering new methods of knowledge transfer.

Most of us will first mention  learning management systems  (LMS’s) when we think of educational technology. Learning management systems are often the centerpiece of a school’s educational technology. But, let’s face it, unless you are an IT Administrator or tasked specifically with onboarding a new LMS, you’re not going to be introducing a learning management system into your classroom (TBH, you wouldn’t need to).

So, let’s consider some innovative educational technology that you could introduce into the classroom:

• Feedback assessment tools  – Feedback is critical both for students to receive and to give. It can help teachers gauge understanding in real time and get a pulse check of the class. Feedback assessment tools (polling, surveys, forms, knowledge check) are also incredibly easy to bring into the class. We even use them today by having students raise their hands and count their responses. Feedback assessment tools provide a fun way for students to leverage technology in the class. Additionally, it can save teachers time by aggregating the data and saving responses to review later.
• Video conferencing and virtual classrooms – Though millions of teachers and students have become newly minted  virtual classroom  professionals over the last couple of years,  virtual schools and virtual academies  have utilized powerful virtual classroom platforms as their primary point of face-to-face instruction for years. Virtual classrooms are video conferencing platforms built with specific tools for learning. Conduct virtual classes or provide options for students to collaborate virtually. Students and teachers alike need to become more comfortable on video.
• Video projects – Our students are digital natives. They are also video creators. Whether they are on TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, or Snap you can be sure that students know their way around video. Leverage their passion by bringing video into their projects. Assign projects for student collaborators to create a video around specific topics. Not only will they exercise their creativity, but they’ll also sharpen their communication skills as they work together.

There are many angles to look at so don’t limit yourself. Search online or just ask what your fellow teachers are doing.

Kaltura Virtual Classroom as an Example to Education Innovation 

Kaltura virtual classroom  has been designed and built for education and training. Teachers can conduct interactive, face-to-face classes that actively engage remote students. Teachers are not simply connecting face-to-face to lecture passive students. The platform provides tools that allow teachers to introduce innovation in education.

• Real-time polling – Teachers can use a live polling tool to pulse check students. Of course, they can ask students on video to raise their hands or click a hand raise button, but even better is a polling tool to gauge measurable feedback. With preset polling options, teachers can launch a poll with a click. Students then select their reply and teachers see real time aggregate results as well as what each student replied.
• Quizzing – Sometimes polling isn’t enough. We need to gauge a deeper understanding in real time and use that information to inform the rest of the lesson. Create quizzes with different question types for students to complete in the class. Teachers can give the quiz and see real-time results. The results are also available to review after class. With this information, teachers can be more confident that students are understanding the material presented or move to reinforce items now – in class – rather than finding out later.
• Interactive whiteboards and file annotations – We want students actively participating in their learning. What better way to encourage that than with an interactive whiteboard. A whiteboard is a great space for students to share their ideas, collaborate, and brainstorm.
• Video in the classroom – Video is incredibly powerful at explaining complex topics in digestible ways. Kaltura virtual classroom provides opportunities for teachers to leverage their own video library as well as video sources like YouTube in the class to drive home their lesson plan. When teaching, we have to make things dynamic and interesting. We cannot shy away from producing multimedia experiences such as utilizing presentations, images, whiteboards, and, of course, video.
• Breakout rooms – Remote and distance education typically ignored peer engagement, but as educators, we know that peer engagement is critical to any student’s success in the classroom. Kaltura virtual classroom breakout rooms provide awesome ways for teachers to host directed breakout room experiences. Students can engage one another safely around content provided directly by the teacher with a single click of a button. Encourage branching scenarios, role play, and group projects in breakout rooms.

The future of education innovation 

Very often we find ourselves in a time and place where the status quo is the goal. We may be coasting with enough success in the classroom that there isn’t much appetite to shake things up. For better or worse, that isn’t the current landscape and not one we can expect to return to anytime soon.

Innovation in the classroom has been unleashed. School districts have quickly realized that they’re behind and will look to not only catch up but surpass their innovation deficits. Innovation in education  trends of 2022  are going to continue and accelerate what we’ve already seen throughout 2020 and 2021.

We can expect to see much more investments in personalized learning, greater acceptance of blended and  hybrid learning , a build-up of asynchronous learning modules to promote independent study, and more brave innovators embracing artificial intelligence,  augmented and virtual reality in the classroom .

Embracing innovation in education promotes critical thinking, a sense of adventure, and an openness to adapt that will serve our students in the classroom. It will provide them with the necessary tools to tackle the challenges of their future workplace and give them the confidence and skills to continue to adapt.

Ready to infuse innovation into your classroom? Try Kaltura Virtual Classroom for free today!

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Sam Thompson

Why is education more important today than ever? Innovation

Eduardo velez bustillo, harry a. patrinos.

The competitiveness of an economy depends a lot on technological progress, but recent data in some countries, including not only high-income but also middle-income countries, suggests that innovation is getting harder, and the pace of growth is slowing down. A new challenge, then, is to understand what conditions are most effective in supporting innovation, so countries can support their best and brightest to advance technology and lead innovative work that helps boost economies.

Education and mobility

The main findings of status attainment research—which studies how an individual’s family background relates to her educational and occupational attainment and income—show that an individual’s status originates in the education, occupation, and income of his or her parents, in particular fathers. At the same time, the individual’s income is also explained by his or her level of education and occupation status, as described many years ago in the seminal book The American Occupational Structure by Blau and Duncan. On the other hand, economists studying human capital theory have emphasized for decades how education correlates to income and have concluded that education increases the productivity of individuals by increasing their skills, as was proposed by Gary Becker . This can be done by investing in people.

This basic model describes the process by which family status and education were converted into occupational status through educational attainment even after controlling by ability, and has implications for how we develop and implement education policy. The results of many studies show that education has a significant positive influence on the occupational and income attainment process . These findings are consistent with human capital theory, where education explains individual productivity after ability is controlled, showing that it has an independent effect on productivity . The results have been similar in developed and developing countries where access to education, including higher education, for example, still is restricted to people with low socioeconomic status.

Education, innovation and technology

Today, there is agreement that education, independent of innate ability, helps spur innovation and technology, and it contributes to productivity and economic growth. A key element in this process is that education is important to adopt the technology that produces innovation. Parental education and a person’s education affect productivity, directly or indirectly, and independently of many other characteristics. In consequence, policymakers in countries that want to remain competitive in the globalized economy need to make sure that the education system takes this into account and supports quantitative indicators (enrollments) and qualitative ones, including the number of Ph.D. graduates , the strongest education indicator of technology and innovation. In the long term, when it comes to spurring innovation, it is more important subsidize PhD students than R&D. This would help produce the sort of technology and innovation that could give us the next generation of mRNA vaccines or medicines to treat intractable diseases. It could produce the next generation of AI tools or maybe the next generation of IBM Watson .

Without fair access to education, we are constraining the possibilities for a country to develop. All countries need to ensure that everybody starts with the right steps early on and moves thru the education cycles according to their capabilities. To do this, countries should equalize opportunities so that individuals, their families, and communities will benefit. Some countries like Finland, Singapore, and Korea, for example, have done it. In a generation, they were able to break the parent-child cycle in terms of access to quality education and access to higher education.

Investing in education boosts innovation

This is important because the findings relate to how innovation and education policy affect individual career choices and aggregate productivity. Emerging studies indicate that subsidies to R&D, a typical policy to support technology/innovation, have a clear strong impact in the short term, but its effect tends to decrease in the longer term. Subsidies to education , however, have a stronger effect on technology and innovation in the long term . A challenge is how to support students to successfully complete Ph.D. programs. These students will be more successful in developing technology and innovation. The literature indicates that expanding access to basic skills, improving the quality of education, and investing in universities may do the trick. These policies help individuals who would have been innovators anyway to become more successful; and allow creative individuals who would otherwise not have become inventors to reach their potential, widening the talent pipeline .

The World Bank is contributing towards improvements in technology and by expanding support to experiences that have been successful in increasing access to higher education, such as the projects that support loans for low-income students so that they can attend higher education in certified institutions. It also supports improving research capacity at the university level, including a series of projects that supported the Millennium Science Initiative. This initiative—initially in Latin America and the Caribbean, but most recently in sub-Saharan Africa—expands doctoral and post-doctoral training to promote scientific excellence and produce better and more qualified science and engineering graduates. It also aims to produce higher quality and more relevant research for firms to utilize these outputs to improve productivity, such as the Millennium Science Initiative project in Uganda . The World Bank is also investing in highly sophisticated technology to strengthen higher education and research universities, including with the Higher Education and Research for Innovation and Competitiveness (HERIC) project in Montenegro .

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Innovation in the Classroom: Why Education Needs to Be More Innovative

Education is the foundation of our economy. What (and how) we learn in school determines who we become as individuals and our success throughout our lives. It informs how we solve problems, how we work with others, and how we look at the world around us. In today’s innovation economy, education beco

Education is the foundation of our economy. What (and how) we learn in school determines who we become as individuals and our success throughout our lives. It informs how we solve problems, how we work with others, and how we look at the world around us. In today’s innovation economy, education becomes even more important for developing the next generation of innovators and creative thinkers.

However, there is a significant gap between the potential of modern education and what many students are actually learning. The adoption and exploration of innovative ideas in education is often slow. Instead, many educators still cling to old and increasingly ineffective methods of teaching.

But as the great poet William Butler Yeats once said:

Education should not be the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.

Using innovative teaching methods to better serve students and to teach them about the benefits of innovative thinking, does so much more than just “fill the pail.” It ignites a passion for learning and   provides students with the tools they need to succeed in the innovation economy.

Let's look at some of the ways that innovation can improve education.

Benefits of Technology in the Classroom

There's quite a bit of evidence that technology, when used in the right way, helps students learn. One study, for example, showed that a medical school class with iPads scored 23% higher on exams than classes without this device.

Technology, such as tablets, isn't only useful for absorbing knowledge; it helps with communication as well. Teachers and administrators use such devices to send materials and information to students and parents. Students hand in homework and term papers online and can access educational applications and programs to further assist with learning.

Here are some of the clear benefits of using technology in the classroom:

• It makes learning interesting and engaging, especially for younger generations raised on the latest technology.
• It allows for faster and more efficient delivery of lessons, both in the classroom and at home.
• It reduces the need for textbooks and other printed material, lowering long-term costs incurred by schools and students.
• It makes collaboration easier. Students, teachers, and parents can communicate and collaborate more effectively.
• It helps to build technology-based skills, allowing students to learn, early on, to embrace and take advantage of the tools technology offers.

Finding Innovative Applications of Technology

While technology, in and of itself, does not always spur innovation in the classroom, there are countless innovative ways to use technology to better teach and engage students. Here are some examples:

• Robots in the Classroom – South Korean schools have experimented with robot teachers . This makes lessons more interesting and entertaining for kids and enables teachers from anywhere in the world to be “present” in the classroom.
• Mobile Technology – Smartphones and other mobile devices are increasingly used in education . Mobile apps let teachers conduct digital polls, enhance verbal and presentation skills, and incorporate technological skills with core competency lessons.
• 3D Learning – Kids enjoy 3D games and movies, so why not use this technology to help them learn? GEMS Modern Academy in Dubai does just this, providing students with a 3D lab that offers interactive multimedia presentations.
• Assisting Special Needs Students – Assistive technology is especially useful for students with learning disabilities. For example, phonetic spelling software helps dyslexic students and others with reading problems to convert words to the correct spelling.

Innovations in Teaching Methods

When we think of innovation nowadays, we usually think of technology. However, in a field such as education, it's just as important to focus on innovations in areas such as child psychology, learning theories, and teaching methods. This is particularly true at a time when many educators believe that the U.S. education system is failing. There are quite a few areas where innovations in education will help improve the system for everyone.

• Focus on STEM – It's important for educators to prepare students for the future by empowering them with the foundational skills they need to succeed later in life. This includes focusing on STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math), where the United States is currently ranked 31st in the world.
• Addressing the Needs of Individual Students – Another longstanding problem in education is the one-size-fits-all approach. It’s well known that everyone has different styles of learning. Some students are visual learners, while others are verbal or auditory learners. Technology allows teachers to individualize lesson plans to different students and their unique styles of learning.
• Practical Education and Soft Skills – One criticism of education is that it's impractical and doesn't prepare students for living in the real world. When it comes to actually teaching students how to become innovative thinkers, they need to learn leadership skills, to be encouraged to think creatively, and to be taught independent thinking and learning. Innovative classrooms are beginning to place more emphasis on the soft skills needed to thrive in today’s world.

Analytics in Education

Big data and analytics now dominate the world of business, but analytics can also have a major impact on education. Data can help educators better understand their students' needs and more easily identify areas for improvement. Just as businesses use analytics to assess the results of marketing campaigns or to obtain information about their audience, educators can use data to determine the effectiveness of teaching methods and get a more granular view of who their students are and what they need to be successful. Data helps to take the guesswork out of educational innovation. Learning analytics can also help schools measure the effectiveness and performance of teachers.

The Future of Education

Technology and other changes in society demand innovation in education. While many schools face challenges such as underfunding, unengaged students, and outdated curriculums, innovation offers a path forward.

Innovation isn’t just important for businesses. In many ways, education stands to benefit the most from both utilizing and teaching innovation in the classroom. By exploring new and better ways to educate students and also teaching the skills students need to become innovators themselves, today’s educators can have a tremendous impact on the future of our world. If you are an educator looking to jumpstart innovation in your school, check out how I and my team can help .

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Phil McKinney is an innovator, podcaster, author, and speaker. He is the retired CTO of HP. Phil's book, Beyond The Obvious, shares his expertise and lessons learned on innovation and creativity.

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How technology is reinventing education.

New advances in technology are upending education, from the recent debut of new artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots like ChatGPT to the growing accessibility of virtual-reality tools that expand the boundaries of the classroom. For educators, at the heart of it all is the hope that every learner gets an equal chance to develop the skills they need to succeed. But that promise is not without its pitfalls.

“Technology is a game-changer for education – it offers the prospect of universal access to high-quality learning experiences, and it creates fundamentally new ways of teaching,” said Dan Schwartz, dean of  Stanford Graduate School of Education  (GSE), who is also a professor of educational technology at the GSE and faculty director of the  Stanford Accelerator for Learning . “But there are a lot of ways we teach that aren’t great, and a big fear with AI in particular is that we just get more efficient at teaching badly. This is a moment to pay attention, to do things differently.”

For K-12 schools, this year also marks the end of the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) funding program, which has provided pandemic recovery funds that many districts used to invest in educational software and systems. With these funds running out in September 2024, schools are trying to determine their best use of technology as they face the prospect of diminishing resources.

Here, Schwartz and other Stanford education scholars weigh in on some of the technology trends taking center stage in the classroom this year.

AI in the classroom

In 2023, the big story in technology and education was generative AI, following the introduction of ChatGPT and other chatbots that produce text seemingly written by a human in response to a question or prompt. Educators immediately  worried  that students would use the chatbot to cheat by trying to pass its writing off as their own. As schools move to adopt policies around students’ use of the tool, many are also beginning to explore potential opportunities – for example, to generate reading assignments or  coach  students during the writing process.

AI can also help automate tasks like grading and lesson planning, freeing teachers to do the human work that drew them into the profession in the first place, said Victor Lee, an associate professor at the GSE and faculty lead for the  AI + Education initiative  at the Stanford Accelerator for Learning. “I’m heartened to see some movement toward creating AI tools that make teachers’ lives better – not to replace them, but to give them the time to do the work that only teachers are able to do,” he said. “I hope to see more on that front.”

He also emphasized the need to teach students now to begin questioning and critiquing the development and use of AI. “AI is not going away,” said Lee, who is also director of  CRAFT  (Classroom-Ready Resources about AI for Teaching), which provides free resources to help teach AI literacy to high school students across subject areas. “We need to teach students how to understand and think critically about this technology.”

Immersive environments

The use of immersive technologies like augmented reality, virtual reality, and mixed reality is also expected to surge in the classroom, especially as new high-profile devices integrating these realities hit the marketplace in 2024.

The educational possibilities now go beyond putting on a headset and experiencing life in a distant location. With new technologies, students can create their own local interactive 360-degree scenarios, using just a cell phone or inexpensive camera and simple online tools.

“This is an area that’s really going to explode over the next couple of years,” said Kristen Pilner Blair, director of research for the  Digital Learning initiative  at the Stanford Accelerator for Learning, which runs a program exploring the use of  virtual field trips  to promote learning. “Students can learn about the effects of climate change, say, by virtually experiencing the impact on a particular environment. But they can also become creators, documenting and sharing immersive media that shows the effects where they live.”

Integrating AI into virtual simulations could also soon take the experience to another level, Schwartz said. “If your VR experience brings me to a redwood tree, you could have a window pop up that allows me to ask questions about the tree, and AI can deliver the answers.”

Gamification

Another trend expected to intensify this year is the gamification of learning activities, often featuring dynamic videos with interactive elements to engage and hold students’ attention.

“Gamification is a good motivator, because one key aspect is reward, which is very powerful,” said Schwartz. The downside? Rewards are specific to the activity at hand, which may not extend to learning more generally. “If I get rewarded for doing math in a space-age video game, it doesn’t mean I’m going to be motivated to do math anywhere else.”

Gamification sometimes tries to make “chocolate-covered broccoli,” Schwartz said, by adding art and rewards to make speeded response tasks involving single-answer, factual questions more fun. He hopes to see more creative play patterns that give students points for rethinking an approach or adapting their strategy, rather than only rewarding them for quickly producing a correct response.

Data-gathering and analysis

The growing use of technology in schools is producing massive amounts of data on students’ activities in the classroom and online. “We’re now able to capture moment-to-moment data, every keystroke a kid makes,” said Schwartz – data that can reveal areas of struggle and different learning opportunities, from solving a math problem to approaching a writing assignment.

But outside of research settings, he said, that type of granular data – now owned by tech companies – is more likely used to refine the design of the software than to provide teachers with actionable information.

The promise of personalized learning is being able to generate content aligned with students’ interests and skill levels, and making lessons more accessible for multilingual learners and students with disabilities. Realizing that promise requires that educators can make sense of the data that’s being collected, said Schwartz – and while advances in AI are making it easier to identify patterns and findings, the data also needs to be in a system and form educators can access and analyze for decision-making. Developing a usable infrastructure for that data, Schwartz said, is an important next step.

With the accumulation of student data comes privacy concerns: How is the data being collected? Are there regulations or guidelines around its use in decision-making? What steps are being taken to prevent unauthorized access? In 2023 K-12 schools experienced a rise in cyberattacks, underscoring the need to implement strong systems to safeguard student data.

Technology is “requiring people to check their assumptions about education,” said Schwartz, noting that AI in particular is very efficient at replicating biases and automating the way things have been done in the past, including poor models of instruction. “But it’s also opening up new possibilities for students producing material, and for being able to identify children who are not average so we can customize toward them. It’s an opportunity to think of entirely new ways of teaching – this is the path I hope to see.”

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Why innovation in education?

A number of developments within and outside the University make it necessary to treat the issue of innovation with greater urgency. An overview of these developments is given below.

External developments

Everything around us is constantly changing: students, the university, technology, society, the job market, the world.

Rapid developments in technology are also forcing the University to rethink its approach to teaching. Many new providers are appearing on the global stage, and the University has to consider how to respond to  these new providers of online teaching or modular education. Will future students build their own portfolio and follow their chosen modules ‘anytime, anywhere’? In that scenario, we have to ask ourselves what extras the University can offer and what added value we can provide. It is also important for the University to respond to the opportunities offered by new technologies for our on-campus teaching. Students today are digital natives: they acquire knowledge in different, more interactive ways than in the past. In addition, new digital tools are constantly appearing that can enrich our teaching and ensure that our students are more active participants in the educational process.

Finally, there are the developments in employability. The positions that our graduates will hold in the future still have to be largely created. The labour market for which we educate our students is becoming increasingly dynamic and consequently requires different knowledge and skills from our graduates than previously. There is a strong call for 21st-century skills and transferable skills, such as collaboration, communication and entrepreneurship. At the same time, the labour market expects us to train students in critical thinking and the ability to resolve complex problems by applying rigorous scientific methods.

Internal developments

An inventory and analysis of educational innovation projects at Leiden University shows the enormous efforts of our teachers aimed at innovation in our teaching. More than 150 innovative projects have been identified on a wide range of topics, such as digitisation, curriculum reform, skills teaching, internationalisation, active learning and community building. These projects, initiated by staff who have a passion for teaching, have proven highly effective. However, the full potential of these projects is not being fully utilised: knowledge about innovation is widely dispersed and fragmented, and is not being shared sufficiently, benefits of scale are not being exploited and the connections between different innovations are not being recognised and implemented. A University-wide vision on teaching and learning can ensure that the aims of knowledge sharing, benefits of scale and connections are achieved.

A second internal motivation for developing a shared vision on teaching and learning and a related innovation plan is the much-discussed imbalance between research and teaching. Careers within the University are still too biased towards research performance. This issue was recognised in the internal Report on Academic Career Policies adopted by the Executive Board in December 2014. Implementation of the plan started in 2015. One of the plan’s recommendations was to make it possible to be promoted from Assistant to Associate Professor (or from Lecturer to Senior Lecturer) on the basis of teaching performance. This proposal forces us to look carefully at what exactly constitutes good or excellent teaching, and what aspects of teaching we and our students consider important.

As a final point, the satisfaction of our students is an important motivation for educational innovation and improvement. There is considerable room for improvement in the master’s programmes in particular. Student satisfaction will have a positive impact on study results, and is therefore certainly one of the indicators of teaching quality. The lack of satisfaction identified in the National Student Surveys in recent years, for example, compels us to take another, closer look at our programmes, curricula, courses and teaching methods and to reflect on how we can involve our students more actively in our teaching.

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Innovation. It’s such an overused term, isn’t it? Everyone these days is striving to be innovative, is promising innovation, is encouraging others to innovate. But if you think about it, it’s overused for a reason. It’s a single word that encapsulates everything that is exciting in any industry—a goal to shoot for because it means you’re different, your ideas are new, and your work is almost magical.

Our team uses the term a lot, and we say it proudly! Innovation in the education vertical is so very important. We want our students to love learning, we need them to! By being innovative, we can engage students in ways we never have before, and that’s pretty incredible.

We surveyed teachers and educators to respond to two questions: What does innovation in education mean to you? And, what’s the most innovative thing you have done—or have seen another teacher do—in the classroom? Some of our favorite responses are below. Read on and get inspired.

What does innovation in education mean to you?

“Innovation in education means doing what’s best for all students. Teachers, lessons, and curriculum have to be flexible. We have to get our students to think and ask questions. We need to pique their curiosity, and find ways to keep them interested. Innovation means change, so we have to learn that our students need more than the skills needed to pass the state assessments given every spring. We have to give them tools that will make them productive in their future careers.”  – Kimberly

“Innovation, to me, means finding any way you can to reach all of your students. This means being willing and flexible to adjust what you teach and how you teach. We have to keep our students engaged and excited to learn. We have to create a safe place for them to make mistakes, take risks, and ask questions.” – Ashley

“Innovation in education is always seeking knowledge that will support new and unique ideas in instructional techniques that will reach the students in more effective and exciting ways.” – Mischelle

“Innovation in education is stepping outside of the box, challenging our methods and strategies in order to support the success of all students as well as ourselves. This transformation may be small or a complete overhaul, but it is done with purpose and supports the whole student.” – Whitney

“Innovation in education means allowing imagination to flourish and not be afraid to try new things. Sometimes these new things fail but it’s awesome when they are a success. Without the right attitude, innovation would just be a word and the art of education would miss out on some great accomplishments.”  – Valerie

“Innovation means keeping yourself educated about new trends and technology in education. For example, I incorporated STEM bins into my classroom because their is a huge push for more STEM related activities in education. I think innovation is also being creative with the resources your given. Sometimes your building or district might not provide everything you need for a lesson so you need to be innovative and think on the fly of how you could make something work!” – Nadia

What’s the most innovative thing you have done—or have seen another teacher do—in the classroom?

“My team teacher and I used guest teacher certificates as part of our reward system. Kids had 10-15 minutes to teach the class anything they wanted. It was amazing to see them get up in front of their peers and share their passions!” – Marlene

“I set my math & science units for my third graders up like college classes. Students start with picking a particular major and at the end of the unit, we work on making connections on how each lesson relates to the real world and the job they each choose individually. My students absolutely love the opportunity to be treated like adults and explore future options.” – Jade

“We have at times had students begin creating graphic novels in order to have better recall regarding historical information!” – Misty

“My second graders grade their own tests using their tech devices. They get immediate feedback and take the time to understand the answers that are wrong.” – Jenifer

“The most innovative thing I’ve done in my classroom is using a TAP (Teacher Advancement Program) rubric in my whole lesson where there are 19 indicators to follow. Some of the indicators are standards and objectives, activities and materials, feedbacking, questioning, etc. These indicators are true testament that if this TAP rubric is done daily, I can move students daily. Move means students’ academic growth. There is nothing more rewarding for a teacher than to see his or her students academic grow, improve, or increase. That’s the beauty of the TAP rubric.”  – Marlyn

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What Is The Importance Of Innovation In Education?

Innovation in education is becoming more than just a catchphrase in schools. It is quickly becoming a popular method of learning and instructing for both children and educators. Students and teachers are encouraged to investigate, discover, and use all of the tools available to learn something new through innovation and transformation. Innovation entails a new way of approaching and solving problems.

It also benefits education because it pushes students to solve real problems at a higher level of understanding. Innovation does not always imply technology application or the generation of new inventions, though these factors can help. Innovation entails a shift in thinking, which aids in the development of student’s creative thinking and problem-solving abilities.

What is Innovation in Education?

In general, innovation entails the development or introduction of new products, procedures, or business strategies for the benefit of a company. Also, innovation in education likewise aims at bringing about positive progress, but these changes will considerably benefit a school, classroom, district, college, or even an institution’s training and learning practice. Teachers and researchers approach this method in a variety of ways, both big and small. For example, in the field of education, innovation could include:

• A teacher recognizes the need and requirements for opinions to be shared more comfortably among other teachers in their constituency and develops procedures to make that happen.
• A lecturer notices a gap in their students’ comprehension and comes up with brand-new and innovative methods to approach the subject.
• An administrator recognizes the need for improved communication between instructors and parents and attempts to develop an online platform that provides parents with more information on their children’s progress.

Why is Innovation in Education important, and what is Innovative Teaching?

Educational Innovation is crucial because the young minds shaped by the educational system in modern times will lead the charge for development tomorrow. And, if the rapidly changing requirements of today’s workforce are any sign of what is ahead for coming generations, this investment in education would be essential to keep progressing at the present rate and quality.

To catch up, instructors must update the out-of-date processes and techniques that define schools and universities across the country to implement practices that prepare students better for future roles. The spirit and character of the classroom get created by the teachers.

The cornerstone of creative education is novel teaching concepts that encourage learning, inquiry, exploration, and risk-taking. For improved results, some instructors have combined technology with textbook study. The utilization of films, graphic novels, storytelling, robotics, and other technology, is inextricably linked to the concept of innovation school.

For example, when introducing picture books and storybooks for history lectures, a pupil is more likely to remember a subject when demonstrated practically rather than verbally.

Alternatively, applying the design thinking method to learning and pedagogical improvements is a comprehensive approach. In terms of creative schools and teaching techniques, the instructor might start by separating students into groups and guiding them to find innovative solutions for the given problem.

This design thinking process is a method for identifying problems, gathering data, generating potential solutions, refining ideas, and testing solutions. Discovery, Interpretation, Ideation, Experimentation, and Evolution are the five steps of this process.

Also, the educational system must remain effective while also being relevant to the advancements we are achieving and the difficulties our planet is now experiencing. It is past time to encourage creative learning so that kids learn far beyond what’s taught in a textbook.

If you feel like diving deep into the innovation field and its role in education, you must, without any delay, get yourself enrolled in comprehensive innovation courses provided by MIT ID Innovation to brush up your knowledge and excel in your career.

References:

https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/JRIT-10-2016-0007/full/html

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The Impact of Innovation in Education

• July 15, 2021

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In the field of education, school leaders are always striving to improve their practices, the quality of their educational programs, and the total school program in general. These improvements are geared towards student success, whether it be through accountability measures like high-stakes testing or general programs that contribute to the overall wellbeing of students. By definition, innovation means the “action or process of innovating, through a new method, idea, or product.” Innovation is a term used overzealously in the business and industry world and has recently made its rounds in educational jargon.

How Does Innovation Impact Education?

When examining the American Educational System, there have been many changes to how education has been provided since the forming of the United States. In 2021, educators are highly aware of the need for constant collaboration with colleagues , and the general consensus that as educators, we simply cannot deliver the same instructional practices that were in place 25+ years ago.

As the great philosopher Plato stated, “necessity is the mother of invention.” In the business and industry world, innovative thinkers are responsible for many of the expected, normal operations that years ago weren’t even thought of. Goods and services like mobile food delivery services powered by innovative apps on our smartphones, tv/video streaming platforms, shipping features from companies like Amazon and Walmart that deliver items in 24-48 hours (sometimes by drone), and so many more innovative ideas exist solely because creative thinkers saw a need for these goods and services.

These concepts we take for granted today were once ideas drawn or developed on a whiteboard in a room full of people brainstorming. All of these ideas were born out of the notion that innovation is critical to the consumer mentality of the world.

Recent Educational Innovations and Their Impact

Like the consumer world, innovative practices in education are critical to new growth and change as well. When examining innovative practices in education, there is more to innovation than technological innovations. Innovative practices in education involve how we use technology and harness its power.

Moreover, innovation in education can be as simple as doing things in a new way, requiring different approaches, processes, products, or strategies. For educational leaders, we strive to constantly re-design the concept of education to meet the needs of diverse learners, paving the way for innovation that is relevant, personalized, and responsive to the students in our classrooms and schools today.

Innovation in education can lead to better overall outcomes in the school environment. Innovative classrooms are filled with students who are developing stronger communication skills and building engagement capacity amongst their peers. Personalized learning and differentiated opportunities for students due to innovative practices in education are key components to preparing students for a global, competitive workforce in the 21st century. In this digital age, students learning in innovative classrooms can potentially retain more information and process at a deeper level of understanding.

Innovation in education is not just limited to students or teachers. Communication apps, surveys, and other innovative programs allow for parents and guardians to be more plugged into their child’s school, and can lead to greater involvement and engagement between students, parents, and school faculty.

Over the course of the last ten years in education, multiple innovative trends and practices have emerged. The first is Problem or Project-Based Learning (PBL), in which students take an identified problem and, using innovative practices, collaboration, and creative thinking processes, come up with new and imaginative ways to solve common problems.

Additionally, the PBL method is popular due to the fact that it often combines multiple disciplines into one project, thus creating and promoting active engagement, learning, and a deeper dive into understanding for students. Ultimately, students see and experience the payoff moment of taking a problem from start to finish and creating new and unique solutions to that problem for the betterment of the group impacted by the initial problem or challenge.

The next innovative practice is Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) . As educators seek to constantly evolve and better their own practices and methods, the PLC model allows for them to gain valuable input, advice, and ideas from those not only in their own schools, but across the country and world.

The PLC model is made possible by innovations in technology, like shared resources through multiple learning management systems offered by Google and Microsoft. The influx of virtual and hybrid learning brought on by COVID-19 actually increased the amount of engagement between educators through the use of Zoom and Google Meet, as well as the professional learning networks through various social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter. Educators today have a world of knowledge and connection at their fingertips, and these PLC communities are being utilized to better serve our students.

Another example of innovation in education is not necessarily an advancement in technology, but rather an advancement in what education looks like and how it best serves students. Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) is a relatively new way of educating that takes into consideration the social and emotional components that students come to school with and forms educational practices around providing the tools, strategies, and support that students may need to be successful at school, while navigating challenges within their physical environment or past traumatic experiences they have encountered.

Innovative educational practices are critical to produce graduates that are equipped with the tools to be successful in an ever-changing, global society. High quality learning outcomes are pivotal for students, and exposing them to innovative educational models in education can only heighten their preparedness.

As society trends towards technological advancements, creating conditions in our schools that foster and support innovators and educational entrepreneurs is key. Radically improving education as a whole, including the quality of teaching, as well as the accessibility to innovative tools for the learner, teacher, parents, community, and society, are strong justifications for innovation in education.

Although technology is a key component of innovation, remembering the human element of our learners is absolutely vital as well. Although innovative tools are useful, the effectiveness of them depends on the learner, and providing them with the appropriate exposure to innovative tools can only help in their understanding of how to properly use these tools. When integrating various innovations in technology, we must consider the potential benefits and challenges, while developing these innovations into successful teaching and learning practices.

• #InnovationInEducation

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Transforming education systems: Why, what, and how

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Rebecca winthrop and rebecca winthrop director - center for universal education , senior fellow - global economy and development the hon. minister david sengeh the hon. minister david sengeh minister of education and chief innovation officer - government of sierra leone, chief innovation officer - directorate of science, technology and innovation in sierra leone.

June 23, 2022

Today, the topic of education system transformation is front of mind for many leaders. Ministers of education around the world are seeking to build back better as they emerge from COVID-19-school closures to a new normal of living with a pandemic. The U.N. secretary general is convening the Transforming Education Summit (TES) at this year’s general assembly meeting (United Nations, n.d.). Students around the world continue to demand transformation on climate and not finding voice to do this through their schools are regularly leaving class to test out their civic action skills.      

It is with this moment in mind that we have developed this shared vision of education system transformation. Collectively we offer insights on transformation from the perspective of a global think tank and a national government: the Center for Universal Education (CUE) at Brookings brings years of global research on education change and transformation, and the Ministry of Education of Sierra Leone brings on-the-ground lessons from designing and implementing system-wide educational rebuilding.   

This brief is for any education leader or stakeholder who is interested in charting a transformation journey in their country or education jurisdiction such as a state or district. It is also for civil society organizations, funders, researchers, and anyone interested in the topic of national development through education. In it, we answer the following three questions and argue for a participatory approach to transformation:  

• Why is education system transformation urgent now? We argue that the world is at an inflection point. Climate change, the changing nature of work, increasing conflict and authoritarianism together with the urgency of COVID recovery has made the transformation agenda more critical than ever. 
• What is education system transformation? We argue that education system transformation must entail a fresh review of the goals of your system – are they meeting the moment that we are in, are they tackling inequality and building resilience for a changing world, are they fully context aware, are they owned broadly across society – and then fundamentally positioning all components of your education system to coherently contribute to this shared purpose.  
• How can education system transformation advance in your country or jurisdiction? We argue that three steps are crucial: Purpose (developing a broadly shared vision and purpose), Pedagogy (redesigning the pedagogical core), and Position (positioning and aligning all components of the system to support the pedagogical core and purpose). Deep engagement of educators, families, communities, students, ministry staff, and partners is essential across each of these “3 P” steps.    

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Our aim is not to provide “the answer” — we are also on a journey and continually learning about what it takes to transform systems — but to help others interested in pursuing system transformation benefit from our collective reflections to date. The goal is to complement and put in perspective — not replace — detailed guidance from other actors on education sector on system strengthening, reform, and redesign. In essence, we want to broaden the conversation and debate.

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September 6, 2024

Home — Essay Samples — Education — Importance of Education — Education: The Key to Success

Education: The Key to Success

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Published: Sep 16, 2023

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Empowering individuals, fostering innovation and progress, contributing to societal betterment.

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