To say that 2024 was a big year for education and EdTech would be putting it lightly.
The continued evolution of innovations such as artificial intelligence has fundamentally disrupted the landscape for K-12 districts and post-secondary institutions alike. Things don't show any sign of slowing down, either — if anything, we'll likely see even greater changes in the New Year.
The good news is that with a little awareness and preparation, you can take full advantage of those trends. Rather than feeling overwhelmed by new technology, you can leverage it to enhance productivity, optimize spending, reduce overhead, and ultimately deliver better student outcomes.
Let's go over some of the biggest education trends you need to understand for 2025.
Unsurprisingly, artificial intelligence (AI) remains at the top of our list. We've already seen the technology put to use with adaptive learning — a personalized approach to education where a course's content and delivery methods dynamically adjust based on a student's needs, preferences, and performance. Many EdTech vendors have also integrated AI into their offerings for a number of different purposes:
These use cases are only the beginning. In 2025, AI-driven education will continue to evolve, offering deeper personalization and better outcomes. This evolution won't come without hurdles, though, which will include privacy concerns, skill gaps, and the question of where teachers fit into this new, more intelligent model of education.
Modern students require knowledge and skills they can't get with textbooks and summative assessments. That's why, for the past few years, educators have been changing their curricula to focus on preparing students for life outside the classroom. In addition to social-emotional learning and soft skills such as communication, critical thinking, and creativity, we've also seen digital literacy take center stage, with course materials focused on:
In the past decade, technology has obliterated plenty of concepts that were once deemed normal. For one, there's the idea that post-secondary education is the only way one can qualify for certain jobs. While this still holds true for careers in fields such as healthcare, businesses are increasingly hiring people for their skills and mindset rather than their knowledge.
Moreover, to keep up with changing job markets and business landscapes, organizations are establishing alternative credentials and education pathways. In Spring 2024 alone, for example, graduate certificates increased by 10% and undergraduate certificates grew by 4%. At the same time, more people than ever are becoming lifelong learners, continuously upskilling and seeking new opportunities for professional development.
This is probably one trend you're not terribly surprised to see on the list. After all, the transition to hybrid learning has been ongoing for several years now. You can expect this to remain the case in 2025.
As technology becomes more robust and widely available, more schools will take the plunge and embrace digital education. Case in point, it's been predicted that in 2025, hybrid learning options will become the norm for post-secondary education.
School districts both generate and collect a massive amount of data. Until recently, however, they've not had the capacity to leverage that data for any tangible purpose. Thanks to AI, that's changing.
Armed with sophisticated data orchestration and advanced algorithms, educators can now go beyond simple performance tracking, enabling use cases that include, but are not limited to:
Brain-computer interfaces (BCI) are currently the realm of eccentric billionaires and science fiction. That won't always be the case, though. Over the next decade, school districts should expect to see an intersection between neurotechnology and education — one with the potential to completely revolutionize how people both teach and learn.
Some researchers even believe it might be possible to monitor neural activity as a means of optimizing how we learn information and develop skills.
We're probably still a few years out from anything quite that disruptive or world-shattering. At the same time, we expect research into neuroeducation to continue into 2025. There may be some limited experimentation around improving the learning experience for students with disabilities, though it's likely much of the conversation in the New Year will revolve around the moral and ethical implications of technology that can literally read one's mind.
Imagine a classroom where, instead of sitting at traditional tables or desks, the students don virtual reality headsets and dive into a digital learning space. Picture an instructor who can teach students as though they're sitting across from them in the same room, even from halfway across the world. Or, if you'd prefer, visualize a history course where, instead of studying the development of an ancient city, students can wander its streets and experience it firsthand.
A lot of that probably sounds like it's taken straight from the pages of a science fiction novel, but it's not. These are all examples of immersive learning which are at least theoretically possible today. As virtual reality and augmented reality technology becomes more sophisticated and widely-available, we could well see it become a fixture of the modern learning experience.
And 2025 could well be the year that finally happens. Even if it's not, gamification and hands-on learning will continue to replace passive education.
According to a survey of school leaders, a lack of student focus is one of the most significant barriers to learning, with 75% noting it has a moderate to severe impact. Research by Dr. Gloria Mark found that the average person's attention span has dropped from two-and-a-half minutes in 2004 to an average of forty-seven seconds in 2024. Finally, the 2022 Program for International Student Assessment found that two-thirds of U.S. students get distracted by digital devices in class, with 54% saying they're distracted when others use those resources.
Basically, modern education is facing an attention span crisis. Microlearning could be the solution. Rather than expecting students to sit through several hours of uninteresting coursework, microlearning delivers materials in short, easily-digestible bursts.
Alongside other alternative modalities such as gamified learning and social learning, expect microlearning to become progressively more prominent in 2025.
There's a paradigm shift happening in the education sector. Driven by digitalization and technologies such as AI, schools and school districts are increasingly choosing to embrace a more inclusive, human-focused, practical approach to education. And now that you know what's coming, all that's left is to prepare for it.