Commentary: Educational technology for the next five years: The NMC horizon report

Abstract

An overview of the New Media Consortium (NMC) Horizon report for 2012 was the subject of a previous commentary 1. The report for 2014 shows that while some things have changed, others remain the same. In 2012, an exciting prospect was the possibilities of the cloud for storage and dissemination. This has been achieved so it has been dropped from technology for the future. One factor remaining the same is low digital fluency of faculty. The 2014 NMC report is provided as a 52 page pdf file for free download 2. The contents page provides a quick summary of the analyses and predictions and allows rapid location of the topics covered here. You can also view a concise summary video at www.nmc.org/horizon-project. The web page featuring the video also provides a background to the many contributors and the methods used to integrate the data for the report. The consensus is that the top six trends in the future of educational technology are: 1) Growing Ubiquity of Social Media. More than 1.2 billion people use Facebook regularly and 2.7 billion people, almost 40% of the world population, regularly use social media. The top 25 social media platforms share 6.3 billion accounts among them. 2) Integration of Online, Hybrid, and Collaborative Learning. Students already spend much of their free time on the Internet, learning and exchanging new information. Institutions that embrace face-to-face, online, and hybrid learning models have the potential to leverage the online skills learners have already developed independent of academia. 3) Rise of Data-Driven Learning and Assessment. The increasing analysis of student responses, categorized as both data mining and learning analytics, will promote improvement of learning outcomes. 4) Shift from Students as Consumers to Students as Creators. The growth of user-generated videos, pin boards, maker communities, and crowd funded projects is supporting active, hands-on learning. Makerspaces (also known as hackerspaces) began around 2005 creating communities that experiment with a range of metalworking, wood, plastics, and electronics tools to create models and working artifacts. 5) Agile Approaches to Change. Experimental programs are being developed for teaching and improving organizational structure to nurture entrepreneurship among both students and faculty. 6) Evolution of Online Learning. While growing steadily, online learning is still years away from its maximum impact. Significant challenges seen as impeding the adoption of new technology are low digital fluency of faculty, relative lack of rewards for teaching, competition from new models of education, adopting teaching innovations on a wider scale, expanding access, and keeping education relevant. Developments in educational technology likely to progressively change higher education are the flipped classroom, learning analytics, three-dimensional printing, educational games, the quantified self and virtual assistants. The quantified self describes the ability of consumers to track their daily activities through wearable devices such as wristbands to collect data relevant to fitness, sleep cycles, and eating habits. Such selfknowledge can be a powerful adjunct to health related courses. If any of these trends, challenges, or developments promotes curiosity, then consult the report for expanded treatment of all subjects mentioned here.