Dive Brief:
- The "NMC Horizon Report: 2016 Higher Education Edition" includes three sections about higher education technology adoption — one for trends with short-term, mid-term, and long-term impact; one for challenges that are solvable, difficult, or "wicked"; and one for important developments between one and five years to adoption.
- Solvable challenges explained in the report include blending formal and informal learning and improving digital literacy, while competing models of education and the need to personalize learning are considered more difficult. Figuring out how to balance connected and unconnected lives and keep education relevant in a career-focused culture, however, are considered the most complex.
- A panel of experts identified six major developments in higher ed technology that will drive technology planning and decision-making, highlighting bring-your-own-device programs and learning analytics/adaptive learning as having a time-to-adoption horizon of one year or less, augmented and virtual reality and makerspaces just two to three years out, and affective computing and robotics four to five years out.
Dive Insight:
Affective computing will make computers responsive to the emotional displays of students using them, meaning if students are yawning or slouching over — signs of boredom — the computer will speed up the lesson or change topics. With adaptive learning already on its way into vogue in higher education, affective computing can be considered the next generation of design.
When it comes to key trends expected to accelerate technology adoption among higher education institutions, the panel of experts for NMC Horizon identified cultures of innovation on campuses and the process of fundamentally re-thinking how institutions work as long-term trends. Within the next three to five years, redesigning learning spaces and shifting into deeper learning approaches will drive tech adoption. And in the near-term, a growing focus on measuring learning and the increasing use of blended learning designs will be behind it. These trends are tied to an increasing focus on not only access, but success for students in higher education.