For my article this month for Class Central, I took some time to comment about something that has long bothered me about the push for more individualized learning—whether that's as simple as a self-paced schedule for a MOOC or as complex as AI-driven adaptation of course content and assessment to individual learner needs.
And it's something that I think has only gotten more important with the rise of AI: not only did reliance on hyper-individualization miss out on something key to education, but it now misses out on the very thing that differentiates human learners from machine learners. So much of learning is social, both by necessity—that's how our species developed—and by design—the learning goals, whether implicit or explicit, include the ability to engage with others about the content.
I think in this new era, this is in fact one of the defining value-adds of formal education: it's a place where people get together with a common goal (learn some skills or knowledge), but with the add-on effect that they're going to meet and network with and befriend others with that same common goal. The content and credential are the guaranteed pay-off that motivate their enrollment and participation, but the networks and relationships they build are the real value they gain.
Or, in other words: Maybe the real microcredential was the friends we made along the way.
