Sanjay Sarma, MIT vice president for MIT Open Learning and the Fred and Daniel Fort Flowers Professor of Mechanical Engineering, and William B. Bonvillian, lecturer in the MIT Program in Science, Technology, and Society and former director of MIT’s Washington D.C. office, recently produced a new research brief, “Applying New Education Technologies to Meet Workforce Education Needs.” The publication, part of the MIT Task Force on the Work of the Future’s series of research briefs, asks: What lessons from learning science and new technologies might be drawn to make online education, including workforce training, more effective? The brief argues that the U.S. needs to make workforce education a policy priority, to upgrade skills for those being left behind, and to help others shift job sectors to areas where there will be work. Internet-based tools will be critical in enabling workforce education to meet growing needs. However, the brief argues that workforce education will not...
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