1. Distance EducationThe Foreseeable Future
Excerpts taken from:
Horizon Report 2011

2. What is the Horizon Report 2011?
A comprehensive research venture
examines emerging technologies for their impact on teaching, learning and creative inquiry.
Each edition introduces six emerging technologies or practices
likely to enter mainstream adoption within the next one to five years.

3. Key Trends
Abundance of resources and relationships
made easily accessible via the Internet and mobile devices (What impact does this have on the role of teaching and learning and instruction?)
Flexibility in the workplace and lifestyle
People expect to work, learn, and study whenever and wherever they want - instant access (increase in wireless)
World of work increasingly collaborative
rethinking how we structure student and organizational projects (mobile workers)
Technologies
increasingly cloud based (data and services moved to the cloud)

4. Key Challenges and Constraints
Pervasive sense
individual organizational constraints are likely the most important factor in any decision to adopt or not adopt any given new technology
Arbitrary rules
Federal laws
Organizational culture (Saba, 2005)
*Digital media literacy (most common to higher education and highest ranked)
a critical skill in every discipline and profession (skills not yet well defined)

5. Key Challenges and Constraints, cont.
Appropriate metrics
behind scholarly forms of authoring, publishing and authoring (difficult to evaluate blogs, e-books, multimedia pieces)
Unprecedented competition
from proprietary colleges (How do you provide high-quality services while controlling costs?)
Keeping pace with the rapid proliferation of information, software tools, devices
Overwhelming
Greater need for finding, interpreting, organizing and retrieving data

6. Whats coming on the horizon?Technologies to Watch
12 months Electronic books
Electronic books beyond the Kindle now are multifunctional
Support for social interaction
Integration of multimedia and collaborative elements
http://vimeo.com/15142335

7. Whats coming on the Horizon? Technologies to Watch
12 months Mobiles
Increasing in popularity as a primary means of accessing Internet resources.
Twitter, Poll Anywhere

8. Two-Three Years Adoption
Augmented Reality
Layering of information over 3D space
Concept of blending information
QR codes- blends visual (markers-camera) and information
Augmented reality field work
http://gameslab.radford.edu/ROAR/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKw_Mp5YkaE

9. Augmented Reality

10. Two-Three Years Adoption, cont.
Game-based Learning
Supports 21st century skills required for students: collaboration, problem-solving and communication
Allow for experimentation, new discoveries and even failure http://www.molleindustria.org/freeculturegame-eng
Educational games grouped into 3 categories:
Not digital
Are digital, but not collaborative
Collaborative digital games

11. Two-Three Years Adoption, cont.
Gesture-based Computing
Full impact remains several years away
New generation of students accustomed to touching, tapping, wiping, jumping, and moving as a means to engage with information (Wii, iPad, iPhone)

• Learning Analytics
• 12. Improve understandings of teaching and learning
• 13. Tailor instruction to individual students more effectively