Horizon Report - 2012 Higher Education Edition

The New Media Consortium published the Horizon Report - 2012 Higher Education Edition. This report featured several trends and technologies. In this blog, I will discuss one of each and apply a futurist lens to them.

Key Trend
Johnson, Adams, & Cummins (2012) report that "Education paradigms are shifting to include online learning, hybrid learning and collaborative models" (p.4). This key tried is important to both academic institutions and students. The move to online education is a proven model for success. Academic institutions can reach more students and realize cost savings. Students can enjoy the convenience of asynchronous classes.

This trend has implications for the future of higher education.

1. Competition for students will increase as students are able to attend virtually any institution on the planet.
2. Students will increasingly take classes from a variety of institutions instead of taking all classes at one college or university.
3. Koller (2012) suggest that an increasing number of courses will be available online and for free. MIT's OpenCourseWare. is a robust model of Koller's claim.

Two forces that impact this trend are Global and Economical.

Global: The move to online classes makes the concepts of "residency" and "in-state" archaic. Students from different countries can attend the same classroom.

Economical: Higher education is a big business. Students are the customers and they now have a choice of what college or university they attend. Students are no longer limited to educational institutions in their local geographic area.

Technology

The Horizon report praises the advent of tablet computing and details the vast market share the Apple iPad has over its few competitors. I have extensive experience with tablets as a user and professional developer. Based on this experience, here are some futurist thoughts:

1. Tablets will completely replace laptop computers. Models will be available with screens up to 21" and with a full range of accessories such as wireless mice, keyboards, cameras, etc.
2. Apple will release an iPad model that has a built-in BD drive.
3. Apple will release a version of iOS (their mobile OS) that supports Flash media.
4. Apple will release an iPad version that incorporates their Siri technology currently available on their iPhone 4S.

iPad Custom eLearning Module. Copyright Larenda LLC.

Two of the forces that impact tablet computing are Global and Educational.

Global: Tablets can connect to the Internet via 3G or wireless networks. Users are able to connect to others around the globe. Many current Apps support this global availability to include business, collaboration, communication, and entertainment Apps.

Educational: The iPad is ideal as a personal learning device (Johnson, Adams, & Cummins, 2012, pp. 15-16), One shortfall is that most eLearning authoring tools output Flash media which is not supported by iOS devices. The few eLearning or mLearning authoring tools that are available are limited in output. This limitation makes it difficult to create immersive eLearning/mLearning content, course, and courses.


Reference:

Johnson, L, S Adams, and M Cummins. The NMC Horizon Report: 2012 Higher Education Edition. Austin, TX: New Media Consortium (2012).

Koller, D. 2012. Daphne Koller: What we're learning from online education [Video file]. Retrieved from http://www.ted.com/talks/daphne_koller_what_we_re_learning_from_online_education.html