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| NMC Horizon Report: 2015 Higher Education Edition |
1) Which of the key technologies catalogued in the NMC
Horizon Project Listing will be most important to teaching, learning, or
creative inquiry within the next five years?
The key
technologies listed and described in the report include (with brief
descriptions of each):
- Bring Your Own Device-students bring their own technology to the learning environment. (36)
- Flipped Classroom-like in the post before, the lecture happens as “homework” and the classroom is made for collaboration and completing assignments. (38)
- Makerspaces-a physical location where people collaborate on projects, share resources and information, network and build. (40)
- Wearable Technology-essentially it connects the physical person to technology (think about things like smart watches). (42)
- Adaptive Learning Technology-using technology in the classroom to teach to a students’ level while using the teacher to help facilititate the learning. (44)
- The Internet of Things-where even the “small things” are connected to the internet and work together to make life easier. (46)
The report is predicated on increasing digital literacy in universities and colleges. What does this mean as far as selecting the most important technology from the list? For me, the most important technology is Adaptive Learning Technology. Not everyone has access, outside the classroom, to a device, the internet, or makerspace events, and wearable technology may be too expensive.
So the classroom can be an equalizer where everyone can learn at their own pace, and teachers aren’t “lost in the sauce” but can still develop personal relationships with students to help guide their learning and encourage them through this process.
2) What key technologies are missing from our list? Consider these related questions:
- What would you list amont the established technologies that some higher education institutions are using today that arugably all institutions should be using broadly to support or enhance teaching, learning, or creative inquiry?
- What technologies that have a solid user base in consumer, entertainment, or other industries should higher education institutions be actively looking for ways to apply?
- What are the key emerging technologies you see developing to the point that higher education institutions should begin to take notice during the next four to five years?
I’ve been
blessed to have friends and collegues who have children, so I get the opportunity
to hear their concerns about their childrens’ education. I don’t see that there are technologies that
are necessarily “missing” but technological training for teachers and parents
certainly falls short. Developing tools
to help “train the trainer” would be something that would be most beneficial so
teachers can have more tools in their belts to use when students need a little
extra help or different way to learn material.
These tools need to not only be
provided, but administrators and legislators but also allow for such tools to be used.
A common gripe from parents and even para-instructors is that there are
only so many different ways teachers are allowed to teach their students that
they are limited in what they can use to teach students.
There are
still Baby Boomers and Gen-Xers in the ranks of teacher, teachers who have much
experience that should not be lost! As
educators, we are aware that there are different learning styles, and different
levels of learning. So continued
education of educators will be the most important advancement that can occur
for teachers to understand how to use technology to advocate to the needs of
their students.
The
solution (in my limited understanding of a teacher’s time): summer seminars to
introduce and allow teachers to practice using different technology by building
lessons around them. Have technology
labs open throughout the summer (with technological support) so teachers can
have access to them instead of just trying to “fire-hose” train them. From my own limited experiences in teaching
have included using SMART board presentations and a flight simulator
program.
These programs are amazing and can
really ignite passion in students, so it’s great that we use them. My access to the programs was limited,
installing programs on a personal computer either costs money or I ran into
“glitches” and I couldn’t access the programs to plan outside the university
education lab or the local middle school where I taught a lesson.
3) What trends do you expect to have a significant impact on
the ways in which higher education institutions approach our core missions of
teaching, learning, and creative inquiry?
The trends that are listed and described in the report
include:
- Increasing use of blended learning-hybrid classes that utilize both online instruction and in-person instruction (16)
- Redesigning Learning Space-not just the physical environment, but more flexible scheduling for learning (18)
- Growing Focus on Measuring Learning-using analytics to profile the needs and capabilities of the learner (12)
- Proliferation of Open Educational Resources-“free” in the economic sense of education, but also free in terms of ownership and usage rights (14)
- Advancing Cultures of Change and Innovation-institutions adjust what services are provided to grow with the technological changes occurring in society (8)
- Increasing Cross-Institution Collaboration-combining the efforts of various institutions towards common goals through technology (10)
The most important trend?
Goodness, they’re all important! Though, I think that maybe the Proliferation of Open Educational Resources will
have the most impact, as well as the awareness of those open educational resources.
Having
these open resources means that students can learn just about anything they
want! An important thing to remember is
that teachers can provide guidance and possible information on possible career
paths for the different areas where students may have an interest. It isn’t enough to just “learn” how to do
something, but it is important how to apply it to future endeavors.
4) What do you see as the key challenges related to
teaching, learning, or creative inquiry that higher education institutions will
face during the next five years?
People can learn just about
anything on the internet, and an important consideration is the future of
higher education institutions as it relates to continuing educating as they
have for years, and whether or not employers will still require expensive
degrees from universities when someone has learned a needed skill (on their
own) using open educational resources.
If everything is an open educational
resource, how will educators continue to research and teach without things like
income (which pays for the educator’s time), which is often paid for through
tuition and fees of university students?
Will the learning experiences of
open educational resources offer credit for work done in open source learning?
Will universities (say state universitites) credit previous learning
experiences through places like MIT and Harvard? Are there summative
assessments available to test the knowledge of students who elect to learn from
open sources?
Will employers continue to require
degrees, or will a “I learned it open source” suffice in an interview?
Questions like these are
specific to the proliferation of open
educational resources, but how quickly schools grow with technology will be a
key challenge. And if schools are also
meant to prepare students for adult life, then the workplace will also need to
grow with technology as well.
NMC
Horizon Report is developed by New Media Consortium and EDUCAUSE Learning
Initiative. The report can be found here. Information on
EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative can be found here, and New Media Consortium here.
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