In the contemporary world, innovation is about prosperity and news. It means that the mindset of your brand or your corporation is built on a concept that uses the newest methods. This implies that your company culture is open-minded and ready for experimenting with the latest trends and, maybe, partaking as a pioneer in applying avant-garde approaches. It is, moreover, a great manner of marketing, especially in recent times. But what is its meaning in the educational field?
Education’s broad role in innovation
Firstly, innovation in education can be seen from a broader and, in a way, traditional point of view. For instance, considering the common educational setting, innovation might be of great help, and not only for facilitating students’ access to an online subscription system. It is a lot more than that; if managed properly, innovation in education could also involve teachers and parents.
Whether it is about the exchange of ideas on the lesson plan or the behavior of some students, communication between teachers is a topic which very much involves innovation. Or, for instance, the exchange of information between the parents and the school, as well as the school and, of course, its students. And, finally, the internal communication between the administrative components and their relation to both, teachers as well as students, should not be underrated. That said, schools could choose between a wide variety of methods, whether digital or not, to implement these ways of communication to improve the exchange of information between all the parts involving the educational system.
What exactly is innovation in education
Secondly, what we perceive as innovation is not always connected to the latest technological and/or digital trends. Innovation, for instance, is also about bringing a new line of thought into the classroom, exposing it, and going through a critical analysis of the topic. Innovation is when teachers ask their students to draw a graphic illustration about an episode in history class or let the students correct their tests on their own with, of course, a specific evaluation system included, to teach them to learn from their mistakes.
Innovation is giving the teachers and the students the freedom to conduct lessons with an open-minded approach, allowing the first to experiment with new approaches for teaching and the latter, maybe, to speak out without the fear of being judged. Every new method put in practice in schools – no matter how unusual they might have seemed at the beginning – is innovative. Innovation is a mindset; it is all about how receptive one is to the novelties. Schools and other institutions experimenting with new and better methods are by no doubt innovative.
Innovation in higher education
Thirdly, when it comes to the specific case of higher education, innovation is even more relevant. That happens because modern universities use more and more avant-garde methods for teaching, varying from online and blended courses to new digital student support systems. Besides including the examples illustrated in points one and two, innovation is something that will keep the competitiveness between universities and colleges alive. Numerous crises worldwide caused by recent happenings have lowered the subscription rates at the universities and colleges. That is why higher education institutions are in constant search of edge-cutting methods to gain the students’ trust and to have higher rankings than their competitors.
Moreover, a practical example could be that of a study course, a doctorate to be honest, which concentrates exactly on educational methods and how they can be improved by using innovative approaches. The latter does not only include teaching or learning approaches, but every single thing considered innovative that can be used for the sake of education. For example, Northeastern’s Graduate School of Education in Boston, Massachusetts, offers an EdD, in other words, a doctorate whose graduates are Doctors of Education. It is no wonder that its attendants are already full-time employed educators who experiment with innovative education techniques with direct and on-camp practice. In other words, they put their ideas into practice by practicing them on their real-life students and in real-life situations.
ASOMI College of Sciences retains that this is an important example of how innovation can and should be employed in the educational field. ACS is engaged in innovation, especially when it comes to higher education, and is constantly open to new, revolutionary educational methods – as long as they are innovative.
