Key Emerging Technologiesfor Postsecondary EducationBY LAURENCE F. JOHNSON, ALAN LEVINE,RACHEL S. SMITH, AND KEENE HAYWOODFrom the 2010 Horizon Report: Postsecondary Level

The annual Horizon Report describes the continuing work of the NewMedia Consortium's Horizon Project, a qualitative research project estab-lished in 2002 that identifies and describes emerging technologies likely tohave a large impact on teaching, learning, or creative inquiry on college anduniversity campuses within the next ñve years. The Report is produced aspart of an ongoing collaboration between the New Media Consortium (NMC)and the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI), an EDUCAUSE program. The2010 Advisory Board, like those before it, considered a broad picture ofemerging technology and its intersection with the academic world througha close examination of primary sources as well as through the lens of theirown experiences and perspectives.

Key TrendsTrends are surfaced through

an extensive review of currentarticles, interviews, papers, andnew research. The list of trends isranked according to how signifi-cant an impact they are likely tohave on education in the next fiveyears. The following four trendshave been identified as key driversof technology adoptions for theperiod 2010 through 2015:

• The abundance of resources

and relationships made easily ac-cessible via the Internet is increas-ingly challenging us to revisit ourroles as educators in sense-making,coaching, and credentialing. Insti-tutions must consider the uniquevalue that each adds to a world inwhich information is everywhere.Sense-making and the ability toassess the credibility of informa-tion are paramount. Mentoringand preparing students for theworld in which they will live, the

Laurence F. Johnson is CEO, New Media Consortium (NMC), Aian Levineis vice president, community and chief technology officer, NMC, Rachel S.Smith is vice president, NMC Services, and Keene Haywood is director ofresearch, NMC. Condensed, with permission, from the 2010 Horizon Report.Austin, TX: The New Media Consortium.

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central role of the university whenit achieved its modern form inthe 14th century, is again at theforefront. Universities have alwaysbeen seen as the gold standardfor educational credentialing, butemerging certification programsfrom other sources are eroding thevalue of that mission.

• People expect to be able towork, learn, and study wheneverand wherever they want to. Life inan increasingly busy world wherelearners must balance demandsfrom home, work, school, andfamily poses logistical challengesfor today's ever more mobile stu-dents. Faster is often perceivedas better, and people want easy,timely access both to informationon the network and to their socialnetworks. The implications forinformal learning are profound,as are the notions of "just-in-time"learning and "found" learning.

• The technologies we use areincreasingly cloud-based, and ournotions of IT support are decentral-ized. The continuing adoptionof cloud-based applications andservices is changing the ways weconfigure and use software andfile storage, and even how we con-ceptualize those functions. Whatmatters is that our information isaccessible no matter where we areor what device we choose to use.We are growing used to a modelof browser-based software that isdevice-independent. While somechallenges still remain, specifi-

cally with notions of privacy andcontrol, the promise of significantcost savings is an important driverin the search for solutions.

• The work of students is increas-ingly seen as collaborative by na-ture, and there is more cross<ampuscollaboration between departments.Where schools have created aclimate in which students, theirpeers, and their teachers all worktowards the same goals, whereresearch is something open evento first year students, the resultshave shown tantalizing promise.Over the past few years, the emer-gence of a raft of new (and oftenfree) tools has made collaborationeasier than at any other point inhistory.

Critical ChallengesCritical challenges that face

learning organizations are drawnfrom a careful analysis of cur-rent events, papers, articles, andsimilar sources, as well as fromthe personal experience of theAdvisory Board members in theirroles as leaders in education andtechnology. Challenges ranked asmost significant in terms of theirimpact on teaching, learning, andcreative inquiry are listed in theorder of importance:

• The role of the academy—and the way we prepare studentsfor their future lives—is changing.In a 2007 report, the AmericanAssociation of Colleges and Uni-versities recommended strongly

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that emerging technologies beemployed by students in orderfor them to gain experience in "re-search, experimentation, problem-based learning, and other formsof creative work." The academymust adapt teaching and learn-ing practices to meet the needsof today's learners; to emphasizecritical inquiry and mental flex-ibility, and provide students withnecessary tools for those tasks; toconnect learners to broad socialissues through civic engagement;and to encourage them to applytheir learning to solve large-scalecomplex problems.

• New scholarly forms of author-ing, publishing, and researchingcontinue to emerge but appropri-ate metrics for evaluating themincreasingly and far too often lagbehind. Citation-based metrics,to pick one example, are hard toapply to research based in socialmedia. New forms of peer reviewand approval, such as reader rat-ings, inclusion in and mention byinfluential blogs, tagging, incominglinks, and retweeting, are arisingfrom the natural actions of theglobal community of educators,with increasingly relevant andinteresting results.

• Digital media literacy continuesits rise in importance as a key skillin every discipline and profession.But training in digital literacy skillsand techniques is rare in teachereducation programs. In higher edu-cation, the lack of formal training is

being offset through professionaldevelopment or informal learning,but we are far from seeing digitalmedia literacy as a norm. This chal-lenge is exacerbated by the factthat digital literacy is less abouttools and more about thinking, andthus skills and standards based ontools and platforms have proven tobe somewhat ephemeral.

• Institutions increasingly focusmore narrowly on key goals, as a re-sult of shrinking budgets in the pres-ent economic climate. Schools arechallenged to support a steady—orgrowing—number of students withfewer resources and staff. In thisatmosphere, it is critical for infor-mation and media professionalsto emphasize the importance ofcontinuing research into emergingtechnologies as a means to achievekey institutional goals.

Technologies to WatchThe six technologies featured

in each Horizon Report are placedalong three adoption horizonsthat indicate likely time framesfor their entrance into mainstreamuse. Note that the Horizon Re-port is not a predictive tool. It ismeant, rather, to highlight emerg-ing technologies with considerablepotential for teaching, learning,and creative inquiry. Each of themis already the focus of work at anumber of innovative institutionsaround the world, and the work weshowcase here reveals the promiseof a wider impact.

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Key Emerging Technoiogy for Postsecondary Education

On the near-term horizon—within the next 12 months—aremobile computing and open con-tent.

• Mobile computing—use of thenetwork-capable devices studentsare already carrying—is alreadyestablished on many campuses,although before we see widespreaduse, concerns about privacy, class-room management, and access willneed to be addressed. Virtually allhigher education students carrysome form of mobile device, andthe cellular network that supportstheir connectivity continues togrow. An increasing number offaculty and instructional technol-ogy staff are experimenting withthe possibilities for collaborationand communication offered bymobile computing. Devices fromsmart phones to netbooks offeran increasing range of activitiesfully supported by applicationsdesigned especially for mobiles.

• Open content is the currentform of a movement that begannearly a decade ago, when schoolslike MIT began to make their coursecontent freely available. Today,there is a tremendous variety ofopen content, which represents aprofound shift in the way studentsstudy and learn. The open contentmovement is a response to the ris-ing costs of education, the desirefor access to learning in areaswhere access is difficult, and anexpression of student choice aboutwhen and how to learn.

In the second adoption hori-zon—two to three years out—we will begin to see widespreadadoptions of electronic books andsimple augmented reality. Both ofthese technologies are enteringthe mainstream of popular culture:are already used at a surprisingnumber of campuses; and are ex-pected to see much broader useacross academia over the next twoto three years.

• Eiectronic booics have beenavailable in some form for nearlyfour decades, but the past 12months have seen a dramatic up-swing in their acceptance and use.Convenient and capable electronicreading devices combine the activ-ities of acquiring, storing, reading,and annotating digital books, mak-ing it very easy to collect and carryhundreds of volumes in a spacesmaller than a single paperbackbook. Electronic books promise toreduce costs, save students fromcarrying pounds of textbooks, andcontribute to the environmentalefforts of paper-conscious cam-puses.

• Simple augmented realityrefers to the shift that has madeaugmented reality accessible toalmost anyone. Augmented realityused to require specialized equip-ment, none of which was veryportable. Today, applications forlaptops and smart phones over-lay digital information onto thephysical world quickly and easily.Augmented reality is establishing

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a foothold in the consumer sector,and in a form much easier to ac-cess than originally envisioned.

On the far-term horizon—fourto five years—are gesture-basedcomputing and visual data analy-sis.

• Gesture-based computing isalready strong in the consumermarket and we see a growing num-ber of prototypical applicationsfor training, research, and study,though this technology is stillsome time away from common edu-cational use. Devices controlled bynatural movements of the finger,hand, arm, and body are becomingmore common. Game companiesin particular are exploring thepotential offered by consoles thatrequire no handheld controller, butinstead recognize and interpretbody motions. As we work with

devices that react to us instead ofrequiring us to learn to work withthem, our understanding of what itmeans to interact with computersis beginning to change.

• Visual data analysis, a wayof discovering and understand-ing patterns in large data sets viavisual interpretation, is currentlyused in the scientific analysis ofcomplex processes. Visual dataanalysis is an emerging field, ablend of statistics, data mining,and visualization, that promises tomake it possible for anyone to siftthrough, display, and understandcomplex concepts and relation-ships. •

For details on the technologiesdiscussed briefly in this condensa-tion, download the complete 2010Horizon Report at www.nmc.org/pdf/2010-Horizon-Report. pdf

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