East Asia could set the pace for online learning

No doubt you have at least started to hear the rumblings of the traditional higher education system being shaken to its core. Recent US start-ups such as Coursera and Udacity are sending shockwaves through the system as they promise to educate millions with Ivy-League-quality courses for little or no fees through massive open online courses. But, even though many top universities are already rushing to join, the entrenched US higher education system is proving resistant to change.

In East Asia, where the need for quality higher education is "a key vulnerability to sustained growth", according to the World Bank, this presents a tremendous opportunity to take the reins and meet the region's increasing demand for higher education.

The technology's most obvious use is the import of teaching talent to Asia over the internet at little cost. Learning in this way would bring home an "international" learning experience. Furthermore, for those with the inclination and wherewithal to visit a campus overseas, it would intensify the time spent abroad by preparing them directly for tutorial relationships or research labs, minimising the need for extended time in rudimentary lectures or language classes. Hong Kong, which started the first such online course in Asia in April, is already poised to lead the way.

But these online courses are not simply a chance to pipe in prestigious professors via the internet or more effectively deliver a traditional Western education (which could be outdated within a decade). Rather, they represent a chance to build a fledgling technology into a visionary form of higher education that speaks to the specifics of the region and is a model for the world.

Asian policymakers should encourage their universities to explore ways of harnessing the new technology and more active partnerships with the private sector to better define the goals of skill development and knowledge production. In the same way that many countries leapt directly to mobile phones, bypassing landlines, East Asia could now lead a new transformation in learning.

What might this new university look like? We can imagine it as an amalgam of social media and other common digital resources. Students could select classes, via an online portal, not to fill requirements for a major, but to gain skills for professional or personal growth; they could maintain an online portfolio of their accomplishments so that prospective employers could seek them out; the same kind of algorithms that match Google users with tailored advertisements could direct students towards courses that would fill gaps in their educational profile. The whole experience could be grounded by visits to regional "education villages", where students could receive personal guidance.