What is the future of digital education?

Many of you may recall recent news reports in newspapers and on TV stating that "the government will distribute information terminals to elementary, junior high, and high school students by 2020." Additionally, initiatives like the establishment of "ICT CONNECT 21 ~ Future Learning Co-creation Conference ~," a collaboration of companies and organizations aiming to standardize educational ICT, and the formation of various working groups, show a growing nationwide interest in ICT education.

What lies ahead for ICT education? How will "RICS (Ritsumeikan Intelligent Cyber Space)", the educational platform developed by us at Dentsu Inc. International Information Services (ISID), evolve? In this final installment of our series, we discuss "The Future of Education and ICT".

How will the school education system RICS evolve?

RICS is a system jointly developed by ISID and Ritsumeikan Moriyama Junior & Senior High School to enable adaptive learning tailored to each learner's progress and situation. As reported in the previous column, eight months after its launch, its effects are gradually becoming apparent.

We are currently working on improvements to refine it into an even better system. The most significant change is the addition of a "Learning Map." Teachers actually using RICS pointed out that "the learning goals are hard to see" and "it's unclear how much they need to complete." In response, we plan to incorporate features like an overview function showing the relationships between units and the overall learning landscape, navigation information for each student indicating "what direction to take next and how much to study," and a point-based system to make learning enjoyable. We are discussing the UI and implementation methods with schools. Our goal is to refine the system into one that provides detailed support for individual learning and effectively boosts motivation.

Recently, our project members, who are tirelessly promoting RICS, shared that they "feel teachers' awareness of RICS is steadily increasing." Moving forward, we intend to leverage the real-world feedback and data gained precisely because the system is being used continuously. We aim to pursue RICS's potential hand-in-hand with teachers.

In just four years, tablets have become commonplace!

It's been exactly four years since we launched the Education Lab at ISID's Open Innovation Institute (InnoLab). Back then, the idea of using tablets in education wasn't commonplace. However, since then, pioneering private schools have successfully reformed education through ICT, significantly changing the landscape. Major corporations have started moving, the government has started moving... I feel that now, Japan as a whole is seriously taking steps towards promoting ICT education.

At the same time, the challenges have become clear. Who holds the rights to teaching materials, and how should they be managed? How do we secure the necessary equipment for operation? Where should the enormous costs come from? The list of challenges is endless. However, the fact that we can now recognize "these are the challenges" and that organizations are beginning to emerge to tackle them is a significant step forward.

Challenges drive growth. ICT education will continue to develop with increasing strength and steadiness. I am confident that within a few years, it will have dramatically transformed the very nature of education.

For ICT education to take root firmly in society

For ICT education to take root in society, the ICT education market must be established urgently. This requires collaboration among various educational stakeholders, including schools, cram schools, and publishers.

ICT technology evolves at a tremendous pace, day by day, moment by moment. The environment surrounding education will also change significantly in just a few years. Predicting the world five or ten years from now is difficult, but precisely because of this, we want to conduct proof-of-concept experiments with greater urgency, accumulate data, and further drive the PDCA cycle through practical projects.

Moving forward, we will continue to pursue authentic ICT education that adapts to the changing times, collaborating with professionals from diverse industries to advance the utilization of ICT in Japan's educational settings.