The university’s name “42” is a reference  to a science fiction series called: “The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy”. 42 answers to the question of the meaning of life. 

I was asked lately where my research is heading; whether there is an indication of some kind of what is to become of the subject learner. 42 pretty much sums it up for me. Students of 42 are required to work on their own and produce a software or a game of some kind, using whatever available resources they can come up with online. There is no teacher supervising the process, nor tuition, just the students sharing a classroom on the condition that they work together and peer review one another.

I sincerely think that there can be no discourse on the future of education and the learner without mentioning the endless possibilities of online resources in terms of layout, content, or communication. Unless a major catastrophe breaks out and destroys all traces of digital technology, the online pool of resources will increasingly grow stronger. And with it the subject learners who are making it up and they go with or -just as in the case of 42- without instructors.

42 is only one example in a series of attempts to enhance collaborative learning in the online learning environment. I couldn’t agree more with Alastair Creelman in saying that all these models can provide alternatives to diverse types of learners. In fact, the latest developments in education promote exactly this; the possibility of the learners to choose from a wide variety the way they learn and the resources they will benefit from. However extremist all this may sound to the traditional academic voices, it is the various degrees of peer learning and student interactivity that will produce the future landscape of educational possibilities, the future that is now, -a Stan Allen quote that I always like to use-.

References

• BBC News, University opens without any teachers, By Matt Pickles, 26 October 2016
• Alastair Creelman,There is no university of the future, Sunday, November 6, 2016

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