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Sumaiya Qureshi, Art Academy of Latvia (Erasmus Mundus – SDSI Programme), LatviaAbstract
The future of learning is increasingly digital, self-directed, and lifelong — yet the current infrastructure learners rely on is fundamentally flawed. While platforms like YouTube and Google offer unprecedented access to content, they fail to support learners in navigating that content meaningfully. Instead of learning journeys, users experience cognitive overload, algorithmic distraction, and disjointed exploration.
Existing responses — such as digital literacy programs — reinforce the burden on learners to adapt, rather than addressing the deeper system-level misalignments. These approaches neglect underserved populations, rely on slow institutional change, and assume access equals agency.
This presentation offers a systems thinking critique of the self-directed learning ecosystem. It maps the roles of content creators, distributors, learners, and the absent facilitator layer to reveal how misaligned incentives lead to fragmented, inequitable outcomes. Drawing from service design methodology, it presents not a singular solution, but a reframing: that self-learning infrastructure must be treated as a designed system — one whose failure lies not in individual behaviors, but in ecosystem architecture.
The talk proposes a new lens through which to understand and intervene in this system — one that centers learner agency, cross-stakeholder alignment, and ethical use of AI. In line with IAFOR’s themes of Technology, Human Intelligence, and Global Citizenship, this work calls for collaborative rethinking of how digital learning environments are structured, and for whom.
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