The Importance of Applied Learning

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Acquiring some piece of knowledge isn't the end of education, it's the beginning. Real education is now that you know something, what do you do with it? How broadly can you apply it to a new situation? And so the education system not only doesn't have a way to measure that, it doesn't even acknowledge that is the goal of education. So when you create an educational system as Minerva has, that creates that as the only focus of the education, that's why you get better outcomes. Yeah. Because you actually train people to be wise, to be able to apply what they've learned in whatever situation they encounter.

What if every student had access to the same high-quality educational tools? This week, Reid and Aria are joined by Ben Nelson to discuss higher education. Ben is the Founder, Chairman and CEO of the Minerva Project, a for-profit educational organization that created the non-profit Minerva University with the mission of reforming global education through an interdisciplinary curriculum and fully active learning pedagogy. Ben talks about how we can increase people’s access to an elite education that prepares them for success as both professionals and citizens. Also, Ben responds to GPT-4 stories that reimagine what a “classroom” really can be.

Read the AI-generated stories for this episode here.

Read the transcript of this episode here.

For more info on the podcast and transcripts of all of the episodes, visit www.possible.fm/podcast.

Topics:

4:54 - Hellos and intros

6:54 - Ben’s elevator description of Minerva University

11:11 - How we absorb information and the concept of transfer in education

16:01 - The ways technology can deepen learning and remove biases

19:57 - ChatGPT in schools

25:37 - Responding to GPT-4’s story about immersive learning using AR/VR

32:37 - How to push past typical higher education talking points

37:40 - Rapidfire questions, including a take on higher ed and public policy

45:06 - Debrief with Reid and Aria

Possible is a new podcast that sketches out the brightest version of the future—and what it will take to get there. Most of all, it asks: what if, in the future, everything breaks humanity's way? Hosted by Reid Hoffman and Aria Finger, each episode features an interview with a visionary from a different field: climate science, media, criminal justice, and more. The conversation also features another kind of guest: GPT-4, OpenAI’s latest and most powerful language model to date. Each episode has a companion story, generated by GPT-4, which will serve as a jumping-off point for a hopeful, speculative discussion about what humanity could possibly get right if we leverage technology—and our collective effort—effectively.

Possible is produced by Wonder Media Network and hosted by Reid Hoffman and Aria Finger. Our showrunner is Shaun Young. Possible is produced by Edie Allard and Sara Schleede. Jenny Kaplan is our Executive Producer and Editor. Special thanks to Diana El Azar, Surya Yalamanchili, Saida Sapieva, Ian Alas, Greg Beato, Ben Relles, and the team at LinkedIn Media Productions, including Justin Blumenthal, Hasan Ahmed, Keith Cheng, Eric Carlos, and Gabe Lomeli Jr. for video production on this episode.