February 10, 2016

Strategic ed tech planning with the 2016 NMC Horizon Report

Posted by Laura Guertin

I know the educational technology and instructional services staff at my university always look forward to the annual release of the Horizon Report. If you are not familiar with this effort produced by The New Media Consortium (NMC) and the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI), the “NMC Horizon Project [is] an ongoing research project designed to identify and describe emerging technologies likely to have an impact on learning, teaching, and creative inquiry in education. Six key trends, six significant challenges, and six important developments in educational technology are identified across three adoption horizons over the next one to five years, giving campus leaders and practitioners a valuable guide for strategic technology planning” (The New Media Consortium website).

To read the full higher education edition of the 2016 NMC Horizon Report (56 pages), visit: http://cdn.nmc.org/media/2016-nmc-horizon-report-he-EN.pdf

No time to read the report?  Check out this YouTube video summary:

 

I have reproduced the table of contents from the full report below.  How many of these topics are you, your department, or your institution addressing or discussing?  Or are you ahead of the ed tech curve?

 


 

Key Trends Accelerating Technology Adoption in Higher Education

Long-Term Impact Trends: Driving Ed Tech adoption in higher education for five or more years

Advancing Cultures of Innovation
Rethinking How Institutions Work

Mid-Term Impact Trends: Driving Ed Tech adoption in higher education for three to five years

Redesigning Learning Spaces
Shift to Deeper Learning Approaches

Short-Term Impact Trends: Driving Ed Tech adoption in higher education for the next one to two years

Growing Focus on Measuring Learning
Increasing Use of Blended Learning Designs

Significant Challenges Impeding Technology Adoption in Higher Education

Solvable Challenges: Those that we understand and know how to solve

Blending Formal and Informal Learning
Improving Digital Literacy

Difficult Challenges: Those that we understand but for which solutions are elusive

Competing Models of Education
Personalizing Learning

Wicked Challenges: Those that are complex to even define, much less address

Balancing Our Connected and Unconnected Lives
Keeping Education Relevant

Important Developments in Educational Technology for Higher Education

Time-to-Adoption Horizon: One Year or Less

Bring Your Own Device (BYOD)
Learning Analytics and Adaptive Learning

Time-to-Adoption Horizon: Two to Three Years

Augmented and Virtual Reality
Makerspaces

Time-to-Adoption Horizon: Four to Five Years

Affective Computing
Robotics