The future is now
In a recent post here I was sharing my hunch that post compulsory education will look different in the coming decades. Saying something will look different decades down the road isn’t that interesting of a call to make. How it will look is more interesting. Will I be correct?
A lot of what I think it will look like depends on understanding what it means to be a “creator” or an “influencer” online these days. I am not one of these people. I don’t know any of these people. I do, however, consume content from these people. How I think it works is this. They create visual and/or textual content, videos, tweets, etc. Other people follow them to consume created content. These people then, behind the scenes, charge brands for the eyeballs of the audience they’ve captivated.
Contrast this to an adjunct professor at a higher ed institution. They sit behind an application process, a course selection process, a major pay up front (a lot of money usually) process, to eventually deliver the learning experience which is after a syllabus intro process involving lots of reading and some discussion in one very large chunk called a “semester.”
What’s the difference between these two groups of people? For the most part it is the subject matter. Your average creator/influencer isn’t talking about undergrad or grad school course content. Advertising isn’t part of the higher ed business model at least not very commonly. Oh and one is “cool” and the other is…. less so (?).
I think over time the professors will start to look more and more like creators. As they change, instead of professors adopting an advertising model to sustain their efforts, they’ll offer in-person or virtual learning experiences. The content they create will point to and inspire their audience to sign up for those learning experiences. Those learning experiences will look a bit like a seminar in higher ed, in which students discuss a reading. The experiences could be about a book or a work of fine art. Could be in groups or one on one like a professor’s “office hours”. Virtual or in person. In a cafe or a bar. Nearby or abroad (like a study abroad course.) These kinds of offerings will become more and more normal. That is, we’ll come to rely less and less on big fancy institutions to mediate and market non-vocational education like the humanities and liberal arts.
As professors become more creatory, the on ramp to the actual learning (experience) is tiny. Also, the chunks that a learner consumes are not enormous semester-length things, but one book! Gosh that sounds refreshing to me. Always wanted to read War and Peace? Great. There will be a professor offering a much more tailored experience to help you actually get through the book and understand a bit more of it than if you read it solo.
In my original post I projected out decades. The thing is, this is already happening. And with the world’s longest book War and Peace no less. I’m going to keep an eye out for more examples of these kinds of “creators” designing humanities and liberal arts oriented learning experiences. For now here are two that prove my point and show the future is now.
is starting his second year facilitating a War and Peace read along via this platform Substack. I haven’t done it but I have signed up for it. I’ve read W&P a few times so I’ll be doing it to experience his innovative format rather than the initial exposure to the book. For the calendar year, learners who’ve signed up read a chapter of War and Peace a day. Apparently hundreds of readers got involved via Instagram (which is how he ran the first one).Here is someone designing a learning experience around the humanities/liberal arts. He is on these major platforms gathering a rather large audience. People are signing up. People are interested in engaging with books, literature, the humanities. I’d like Extragrad to pour fuel on this fire over the coming years.
The second similar example is professor Al Filreis teaching learners about poetry. Thousands of them in fact. The most common narrative I’m aware of out there is if it isn’t a viral dance craze on TikTok, no one is interested. Yet here people are reading poetry apparently.
He estimates that in a little over a decade of “ModPo” [Modern Poetry] online, he’s reached more than 180,000 students around the world.
Mindbending. I’ve said creators will offer one on one and group-based interactive learning experiences that they facilitate. But that’s just because that’s what I’d like to exist in the world. It’s my preference. Professor Filreis reaches many many more people with his design. From the linked article:
Here’s the drill, devised by Filreis: “Read, watch others discuss, then yourself discuss, then repeat. Do that 119 times in 10 weeks … and you have an intensely interactive, often intimate learning experience across time zones, generations, sensibilities, local educational attainment, or social status.”
So cool. Different than what I’m predicting and offering myself, but really great. And also fascinating that that intimacy is still there. That’s what’s important to me and what I think will drive demand for this sort of offering in the future. Like slow food but in this case a sumptuous book, conversation, and surroundings. That’ll be Extragrad. But Substack read alongs and MooCs are great too! They prove to all of us that we have the time and spaces to satisfy our cravings to explore learning outside of work and job training.
Podcast (Coming soon)
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Reach out to me just for fun! - tommy@extragrad.com
Thanks for sharing Thomas. These initiatives obviously interest me! I should say I am no expert, no Lit scholar. Just a writer and an enthusiastic reader sharing my love of War and Peace. But I find these projects attract a lot of people with knowledge and insight, and that is one of their greatest strengths.