Implementing the suggestions stemming from this research will create a new paradigm for retirement plan education (and perhaps other forms of education, too). If you think about it, this new education paradigm will not only help plan participants, but it will help plan sponsors and plan service providers, too.

So what is it about this coming new paradigm and why will so many benefit from it?

Related: To achieve success, retirement savers must 'Know Thyself'

Before showing you the future, let's remember the past. Traditionally, employee education has occurred in the workplace – usually the lunchroom or a conference room. Workers would interrupt their day and spend an hour listening to a paid professional (courtesy of at least one of the plan's service providers) paint a dire picture based on the inactions they were all guilty of. This only added to the normal stress of work.

On top of this, employees were asked to make decisions that had an immediate impact on the current cash flow. Fortunately for them, the "educator" always promised to return next quarter (next six months, next year, pick your time-frame), so employees always knew they could delay today and make the right decision tomorrow.

Sound like something you might have at least a slight acquaintance with?

This describes the typical 401(k) employee education session since, well, practically the beginning of the 401(k). Sure, the content has changed. We've moved from explaining "What's a mutual fund?" to describing asset allocation and style boxes to focusing on saving rather than investing.

But the key employee question remains the same: Where should I put my money? In the last few years, answering that question has become problematic. In the very near future, it will be almost impossible.

The future of 401(k) education is already upon us. Yes, part of it is the movement away from optimizing investments and towards optimizing saving strategies. But there's more to it than that.

The biggest change will be a movement of venue – away from the workplace and towards the home (or any other suitable place of comfort). Behavioral studies show people make poorer decisions when suffering from "cognitive overload." "Cognitive overload" is a term researchers use. We use the word "stress," and nothing has stress written all over it than work. Moving to a more relaxing environment will help employees make those "should" decisions we wrote about last week.

Since that relaxing environment could occur anywhere, 401(k) education needs to be portable, both in terms of time and space. This education therefore needs to have the ability to be delivered across any platform.

The obvious solution requires an internet-based app. But this is less of a robo-advisor (this will become clear in a moment) and more of a series of modules.

Those of you old enough might remember the SRA Reading Cards prevalent in elementary schools during the post-Sputnik era. This self-paced learning program taught baby boomers how to read. Imagine using a similar learning system to help educate retirement savers.

Although products like this already exist, they don't yet represent the standard in employee education. Worse, they may come with strings attached.

Those strings are what differentiate the current education regime from the new paradigm. Often, internet-based solutions require a pre-existing relationship with the plan.

With the new fiduciary rule, such a quid pro quo might contain liabilities neither the plan sponsor nor the service provider desires. To remove these strings, future education providers are likely to be wholly independent entities. Does that mean an added cost to the plan (or plan sponsor)? Not necessarily.

It's easy to see a typical "freemium" model could handle this at no cost – unless the user (in this case the employee) decides to upgrade the service. From a plan sponsor's standpoint, matching could be tied not merely to salary deferral rates, but also to how far employees have progressed in their self-paced learning (based on universally accepted standardized education modules).

But now I'm really getting ahead of myself.

Suffice it to say this new paradigm for 401(k) education – a shift to self-directed learning – may presage a greater shift towards self-direction (and I'm not talking about investments).