MLearning-Technologies to Watch-Key Trends/Critical Challenges

The following information is used for educational purposes only.

Key Trends





1 The technologies featured in every edition of the Horizon Report are embedded within a contemporary context that reflects the realities of the time, both in the sphere of education and in the world at large. To ensure this context was well understood as the current report was produced, the Advisory Board engaged in an extensive review of current articles, interviews, papers, and new research to identify and rank trends that are currently affecting the practices of teaching, learning, and creative inquiry. Once detailed, the list of trends was then ranked according to how significant each was likely to be for learning-focused institutions over the next five years. The highest ranked of those trends had significant agreement among the Advisory Board members, who considered them to be key drivers of educational technology adoptions for the period 2011 through 2015. They are listed here in the order in which the Advisory Board ranked them.


2 ◦The abundance of resources and relationships made easily accessible via the Internet is increasingly challenging us to revisit our roles as educators in sense-making, coaching, and credentialing. This multi-year trend was again ranked very highly, indicating its continued influence. With personal access to the Internet from mobile devices on the rise, the growing set of resources available as open content, and a variety of reference and textbooks available electronically, students’ easy and pervasive access to information outside of formal campus resources continues to encourage educators to take a careful look at the ways we can best serve learners.
◦People expect to be able to work, learn, and study whenever and wherever they want. This highly-ranked trend, also noted last year, continues to permeate all aspects of daily life. Mobiles contribute to this trend, where increased availability of the Internet feeds the expectation of access. Feelings of frustration are common when it is not available. Companies are starting to respond to consumer demand for access anywhere; in 2010, programs like Google’s Fiber for Communities sought to expand access to underserved communities, and several airlines began offering wireless network access in the air during flights.
◦The world of work is increasingly collaborative, giving rise to reflection about the way student projects are structured. This trend continues from 2010 and is being driven by the increasingly global and cooperative nature of business interactions facilitated by Internet technologies. The days of isolated desk jobs are disappearing, giving way to models in which teams work actively together to address issues too far-reaching or complex for a single worker to resolve alone. Market intelligence firm IDC notes that some one billion people fit the definition of mobile workers already, and projects that fully one-third of the global workforce — 1.2 billon workers — will perform their work from multiple locations by 2013.
◦The technologies we use are increasingly cloud-based, and our notions of IT support are decentralized. This trend, too, was noted in 2010 and continues to influence decisions about emerging technology adoption at educational institutions. As we turn to mobile applications for immediate access to many resources and tasks that once were performed on desktop computers, it makes sense to move data and services into the cloud. The challenges of privacy and control continue to affect adoption and deployment, but work continues on resolving the issues raised by increasingly networked information.





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Critical Challenges





1 Any discussion of technology adoption must also consider important constraints and challenges, and the Advisory Board drew deeply from a careful analysis of current events, papers, articles, and similar sources, as well as from personal experience in detailing a long list of challenges institutions face in adopting any new technology. Several important challenges are detailed below, but it was clear that behind them all was a pervasive sense that individual organizational constraints are likely the most important factor in any decision to adopt — or not to adopt — any given technology. While acknowledging that local barriers to technology adoptions are many and significant, the Advisory Board focused its discussions on challenges that are common to institutions and the educational community as a whole.


2 1 The highest ranked challenges they identified are listed here, in the order of their rated importance.


3 ◦Digital media literacy continues its rise in importance as a key skill in every discipline and profession. This challenge, first noted in 2008, reflects universal agreement among those on the Horizon Project Advisory Board. Although there is broad consensus that digital media literacy is vitally important for today’s students, what skills constitute digital literacy are still not welldefined nor universally taught. Teacher preparation programs are beginning to include courses related to digital media literacy, and universities are beginning to fold these literacy skills into coursework for students, but progress continues to be slow. The challenge is exacerbated by the fact that digital technologies morph and change quickly at a rate that generally outpaces curriculum development.
◦Appropriate metrics of evaluation lag behind the emergence of new scholarly forms of authoring, publishing, and researching. Noted first in 2010, this challenge continues. Electronic books, blogs, multimedia pieces, networked presentations, and other kinds of scholarly work can be difficult to evaluate and classify according to traditional metrics, but faculty members are increasingly experimenting with these alternate forms of expression. At the same time, reconciling new forms of scholarly activity with old standards continues to be difficult, creating tension and raising questions as to where faculty energy is best directed.
◦Economic pressures and new models of education are presenting unprecedented competition to traditional models of the university. The twin challenges of providing high-quality services and controlling costs continue to impel institutions to seek creative solutions. As a result, innovative institutions are developing new models to serve students, such as streaming survey courses over the network so students can attend from their dorm or other locations to free up lecture space. As these pressures continue, other models will emerge as well.
◦Keeping pace with the rapid proliferation of information, software tools, and devices is challenging for students and teachers alike. New developments in technology are exciting and their potential for improving quality of life is enticing, but it can be overwhelming to attempt to keep up with even a few of the many new tools that are released. User-created content is exploding, giving rise to information, ideas, and opinions on all sorts of interesting topics, but following even some of the hundreds of available authorities means sifting through a mountain of information on a weekly or daily basis. There is a greater need than ever for effective tools and filters for finding, interpreting, organizing, and retrieving the data that is important to us.


4 These trends and challenges are a reflection of the impact of technology that is occurring in almost every aspect of our lives. They are indicative of the changing nature of the way we communicate, access information, connect with peers and colleagues, learn, and even socialize. Taken together, they provided the Advisory Board a frame through which to consider the potential impacts of nearly 50 emerging technologies and related practices that were analyzed and discussed for possible inclusion in this edition of the Horizon Report. Six of those were chosen via successive rounds of ranking; they are summarized below and detailed in the main body of the report.




February 8th, 2011