21st century classroom: Responding to the needs of globalised society

Lots of changes have taken place in the concept of learning in the 21st century. The profile and expectation, as well as the needs of students have changed. The job market looks towards education for providing the right skill sets. Academic degrees alone are not sufficient to meet the job's requirements. While the distinct need for a different kind of education is felt all around, the class room teaching is still oblivious to such outside changes. Our class rooms are still catering to the 20th century requirements and are quite old fashioned, even archaic.

The essential difference between the 20th and the 21st century-based learning are in the nature of their outcomes. If the 20th century focuses on memorising facts and the knowledge of concrete facts, the 21st century focuses on what students know and can do, after all these facts are forgotten. 20th century focused on textbook based learning and learning within four walls of a classroom, the 21st century focuses on research-based learning and collaborative learning across the world through internet- the global classroom.

The 20th century was focused on a monologue based teaching by the teachers, with little or no freedom given to the students. The 21st century changes the focus to the students, a high degree of freedom and where the students learn from their peers and their surrounding and the teacher facilitates this learning.

To allow for this method of learning, the classroom provides a semi circular arrangement conducive for group discussions and group work, rather than a linear arrangement staring at the teacher or the blackboard. Digital interactive boards and internet in the classroom allow the students to check facts and hypothesis, to collaborate with a learning community somewhere in Latin America or with a school room in Siberia.

The classrooms of the professional degree colleges in the country are not better off either. Millions of students who aspire to be engineers each year suffer from outdated laboratory and testing tools and equipments. Tools and machinery currently being used for practical classes and for demonstrations need to be updated and contemporary. Hands on sessions should be introduced with the use of simulated machines.
Harnessing technology for the use of education is the hall mark of the 21st century. As an illustration, in order to study the effects of the topic 'is the sun is heating up", the only way to do it would be to simulate its results. As long as classrooms shy away from the use of technology, the full impact of 21st century learning will be missing.

It is said that the 20th century learning mechanism was devised to respond to the needs of the 'Industrial Age'. A factory model, based on the scientific management needs of the employers for the Industrial Age of the 19th century.  The 21st century requires that education responds to the global model, based upon the needs of a globalised, high-tech society.
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The writer is  an entrepreneur and educationist.