Educators' Inner Luddite and a New Direction for Higher Education

Abstract

Currently, humankind is finding themselves in more than one era simultaneously. Some scholars focus on the Fourth Industrial Revolution, while educators discuss Education 4.0 and Learning 3.0 with each other. These are complemented by artificial intelligence and educational (serious) games. However, we are living in many more eras, not being discussed here. Although many educators are talking about all these eras, they are reluctant or ignorant so as to apply them in their teaching and learning. This article wants to open up the eras in which educators find themselves and introduce these eras to calm the educator’s inner luddite towards all these ‘disruptive novelties and technologies.’ With this article, the authors wish to motivate educators to become HEROEs (highly empowered resourceful online educators), recently-minded people (they could be old or young) – people who are living in the 21^st century and think like 21-century people, or pioneers on the new educational path that should be taken by institutions of higher education in South Africa.