Modular Education

Finding your way is a journey, it isn't a destination. When you get started towards a degree in college you think that you "made it", made it to the dorm, made it to your first class, made it through college, and then made it to the degree.

That piece of paper hanging on your wall, as a flag pole of knowledge saying you know a subject. Then you stop learning, and you move onto the job right?

I see learning as three separate tracks, this is how it is for the Modegree platform as well, they are as follows.

1. The boot camp fast track.
2. The degree structure medium track.
3. The lifelong learning slow track. #autodidact

Not only will every person probably hit all three at some point in life, but you can almost try to plan out when you will pursue learning in those modalities.

Why is it so important to have a Modular Education System?

At each stage of our life we have different needs. Sometimes it is to learn a new skill quickly for a job, other times it is for spending years on something to become an expert, and some times it is simply just for fun over the course of your life.

The problem is that we use different systems for all of those, and in reality we don't have to. With the advent of the internet becoming what it has, there is massive potential in online learning, and we are only scratching the surface.

We need a system that can be changed based on the teacher's ability, the needs of the nation if a new skill is needed across the board, or moreover the learner's needs.

Choosing Your own Path

I for one am very much in the concept of having choice over what you learn. So much so that even in secondary school I found myself teaching myself things DURING my classes for some other subject. The fact that I cared so little about the classes, but so much about these various other topics just shows that the system wasn't doing it for me.

To be fair I could have been a better student, in retrospect I should have tried harder on some of the plateaus of learning I faced. Although with the technology we have now, maybe a modular approach would have helped. I could have been taught in an order that made sense to me.

I often think of the future in this regard where a simple AI can just see what areas you've done, what you need to work on, what you enjoy, and then put the lesson up next based off of that.

Or perhaps we forgo that altogether, and the student chooses what to learn. Some elementary schools are doing that already.

Modular Degrees

This is why I created this system of the Modegrees to help people create their own do it yourself degree. A way to curate all of the various things you want to learn, as well as focus on what matters most.

Using notion.so at first, but down the line an actual platform for them. You can collect the resources, clip the page, and then pursue it in an idealized order.

If something doesn't seem to be working or clicking, then you either switch paths to another subject, or more importantly find new resources that resonate more with your learning style. Sometimes it is a matter of getting past a plateau, but other times it is an external factor that you can't control. At least not until now.

Creating a Modern Education System

Our system of learning is archaic.

The classroom setting hasn't changed in over a hundred years. To say that may make some people scoff, as yes it did "change" during the industrial revolution. There was a need for more specialists, so the government combined their efforts with companies to create the public education system.

The problem is not only do we need not need specialists to the degree we once did, for in fact it is the opposite. There are also extreme limitations to how people learn in this old style of doing things. There are more and more students each generation who are failing to learn, not because they didn't try, but because the system let them down. From the neurodivergent to the polymathic, and even just extra curious or gifted students. All of them fail to reach a satisfaction level in the system put in front of them, they may even excel at it, but to them it didn't help them as much as it needed to.

We need to create a system that is scalable, but also personalized to a degree allowing for students who need extra help or extra challenge to be treated properly.

Modularity from the Start

We need a refresh of how learning is approached in the modern world. There are many great minds from the likes of comedians all the way to the most successful scientists; They all seem to have this coherent understanding that we as humans are weird. Our brains are a couple hundred thousand years old, but we live in such an advanced world.

We have been slowly evolving, yet our systems are growing ever more rapidly beneath us. However one in particular is surprisingly not keeping up with the rest of our species global development. That is education, and how we learn.

As established before there needs to be a new way of approaching the way we learn. What we have been doing was purely instituted because of the need of specialists in the industrial revolution of the early 1900's. However we are part of the 4th I.R. right now with the wake of Web 3.0 and the blockchain.

Decentralization and modularity go hand in hand, and if we use that synergy in the systems of learning for our new generations (even the older ones). There can be a huge rise in progress overall.

What is the Point of Choice?

There is a fine line between the power of choice, and indecisiveness. The problem is in the fine print, where the learner needs to understand that with the ability to choose. It comes with the exchange of grit, and the ability to push through even when things get hard.

Same with traditional college, as it does take grit a lot of the time to push past the hurdles. Many people don't realize that, and they think it will be easy to just coast through. Unless you are getting a really simple degree, that is usually not the case.

I think the same thing is going to happen here, with the problem of people choosing to go down another pathway in order to avoid the plateaus.

Here is where it gets interesting however, as the power of choice ALLOWS you to be able to progress more often. Sometimes you can't get past plateaus, they take some sort of knowledge or effort that you can't provide yet. In doing the act of switching, then you hold onto the momentum of learning. You are more likely to snowball your learning productivity.

Moreover the complex bodies of knowledge that you have amassed, then allow you to synergize knowledge areas. Bringing together a more multidisciplinary approach, and that horizontal pivot can allow you to push past plateaus in a new unique way.