5. INTERACTIVE-U: THE INDIA MODEL

In his book Trends 2000, published over 20 years ago, Trends Research Institute founder Gerald Celente laid the foundation for a powerful trend line — Interactive-U, he called it — that would fortify over a period of decades.

“Interactive, online learning will revolutionize education…” he wrote. Moreover, he forecast that “the growth of the home education and Interactive-U trend will accelerate rapidly once tele-videophony or other comparable multimedia-interface technologies become available and affordable.”

Since that prediction, accurately made at the birth of the Internet Revolution, we now live in a world where we shop online, bank online, entertain ourselves online, communicate online, live online… why wouldn’t we learn online?

The Trends Research Institute, in making VR-ED a Top Trend for 2017,  forecast the explosion of advanced virtual-reality and artificial intelligence technology would expand to educational and training settings, building a foundation for learning that will replace today’s outdated Industrial Age education model with a cost-effective, high-reward, low-risk approach to education.

That foundation has been built. And India has created the future that Celente had envisioned.

Software and tech companies across India are developing interactive online programs geared toward primary education level students.

For example, Byju, an education technology software firm, has provided interactive learning programs for more than 500,000 subscribers, ranging in age from 10 to 18 years old.

Byju, and numerous other interactive learning tech companies, are combining videos, game-based VR/AI technology and similar automated technologies to create effective Interactive-U educational courses.

In a country with many lower-income Indian families, educating their children has been a challenge. The relatively low cost of these programs, combined with the simple technology needed to support them – a tablet, PC or mobile device – the success of teaching lower income children is among the many reasons why the “India Model” is drawing the attention of investors worldwide.

Byju, for example, raised more than $200 million in the US and China. And KPMG and Google estimate that India’s ed-tech business generated sales of $250 million in 2016, but estimated that number would grow to nearly $2 billion by 2021.

Investors, educators and technologists throughout the world are beginning to acknowledge India’s new millennium online learning model that will dismantle Industrial Age monolithic education systems worldwide.

TREND FORECAST: The process of integrating VR-ED and Interactive-U learning into aspects of traditional education is a megatrend of 2018 that a growing number of community, political and business leaders will advocate.

Trends are born, they grow, reach old age and die. The Industrial Age education model is dying, an Interactive-U has been born. While still in its infancy and online courses have been emerging in higher education for several years, the India Model provides a future of education on all levels — from kindergarten through doctoral studies — that is virtual.