NMC Horizon Report, 2014

Every year the New Media Consortium (NMC), in partnership with the Educause Learning Initiative, release a series of reports for different education sectors on key trends, significant challenges and important developments recognized in the fields of education.

“The eleventh edition will describe annual findings from the NMC Horizon Project, a more than decade-long research project designed to identify and describe emerging technologies likely to have an impact on learning, teaching, and creative inquiry in higher education. Six emerging technologies will be identified across three adoption horizons over the next one to five years, as well as key trends and significant challenges expected to continue over the same period, giving campus leaders and practitioners a valuable guide for strategic technology planning.”

The 2014 preview has just been released for Higher Education, which identifies the following:

Key trends accelerating Educational Technology adoption in Higher Education
Fast moving trends (those likely to create substantive change (or burn out) in one to two years)

• Online, hybrid, and collaborative learning
• Social media use in learning

Mid-range trends (those likely to take three to five years to create substantive change)

• The creator society
• Data-driven learning and assessment

Slow trends (those likely to take more than five years to create substantive change)

• Agile approaches to change
• Making online learning natural

Significant challenges impeding Educational Technology adoption in Higher Education
Urgent challenges (those which we both understand and know how to solve)

• Low digital fluency of faculty
• Relative lack of rewards for teaching

Difficult challenges (those we understand but for which solutions are elusive)

• Competition from new models of education
• Scaling teaching innovations

Wicked challenges (those that are complex to even define, much less address)

• Expanding access
• Keeping education relevant

For more details on the above please access the report: NMC Horizon Report > 2014 Higher Education Preview

The important part of the Horizon Report is the section where they consider the ‘time to adoption’ or the time scale they highlight as to when the technology or tool(s) will be in mainstream education. This is effectively their warning to Higher Education institutions to look out and plan for the following technologies to  be both widely available, and that the students will be looking for and expecting them (these are more important if we are to be prepared for these developments, which is why I’ve summarised each entry below):

Important developments in Educational Technology for Higher Education
Time-to-adoption horizon: One Year or Less

• Flipped classroom – “”… refers to a model of learning that rearranges how time is spent both in and out of class to shift the ownership of learning from the educators to the students. After class, students manage the content they use, the pace and style of learning, and the ways in which they demonstrate their knowledge, and the teacher becomes the guide, adapting instructional approached to suit their learning needs and supporting their personal learning journeys.”
• Learning analytics – “… is an education application of ‘big data’, a science that was originally used by businesses to analyse commercial activities, identify spending trends, and predict consumer behaviour .. education is embarking on similar [big data and tracking/metric tools] pursuit into data science with the aim of improving student retention and providing a high quality, personalised experience for learners.”

Time-to-adoption horizon: Two to Three Years

• 3D printing – “… refers to technologies that construct physical objects from three-dimensional (3D) digital content [and] builds a tangible model or prototype from the electronic file, one layer at a time, through an extrusion-like process using plastics and other flexible materials.”
• Games and Gamification – “As tablets and smartphones have proliferated, desktop and laptop computers, television sets, and gaming consoles are no longer the only way to connect with other players online, making game-play a portable activity that can happen in a diverse array of settings. While a growing number of educational institutions and programs are experimenting with game-play, there has also been increased attention surrounding gamification – the integration of gaming elements, mechanics, and frameworks into non-game situations and scenarios.”

Time-to-adoption horizon: Four to Five Years

• Quantified self – “Quantified Self describes the phenomenon of consumers being able to closely track data that is relevant to their daily activities through the use of technology. The emergence of wearable devices on the market such as watched, wristbands, and necklaces that are designed to automatically collect data are helping people to manage their fitness, sleep cycles, and eating habits.”
• Virtual assistants – “Virtual Assistants are a credible extension of work being done with natural user interfaces (NUIs) .. the concept builds on developments in interfaces across the spectrum of engineering, computer science, and biometrics.”