But, What Will the Teachers Do?

When a craft becomes abstracted, formalized, refined and embedded in a technology, the practitioners of that craft typically go in one of three directions. The more adept craftsmen start designing and developing formalizations. The most adept begin developing processes for producing the formalized products. And the least adept simply become users of the formalizations.

This all sounds very abstract so let me provide a more concrete explanation in the case of craftsmen. As manufacturing processes began to replace craftsmen, the more adept craftsmen became engineers and started designing products. These products would not be hand made as in the hey day of the craftsmen. They would be produced by a manufacturing process. The most adept of the craftsmen would develop the manufacturing processes. The least adept of the craftsmen would become repairmen for the products. It is interesting to note that as the products and the processes that produced them improved in quality, the demand for repairmen would decline.

Now let's apply this to teachers. The more adept teachers will begin designing online courses. The most adept teachers will begin developing methodologies, processes and software packages for the creation of online courses. And the least adept will be users of these online courses, a job that we currently refer to as facilitators. Note, by analogy, that as the quality of the courses improves the need for facilitators will decline as the need for repairmen has declined. 

This, of course, implies a massive dislocation in the work force of educators as well as massive resistance on the part of those who wish to protect the status quo. How will that all play out? Well, I'd have to think about that before offering any answers.