Each year, the New Media Consortium and the Educause Learning Initiative work together to generate the Horizon Report, a projection of technology trends, challenges, and emerging technologies. A distinguished panel of experts, from 17 countries and 6 continents, was involved in the generation of the 2015 report. Once the panel identified topics for each section, a modified Delphi process was used, with an extensive literature review. (To examine the iterations that occurred throughout the process, see the wiki at http://horizon.wiki.nmc.org.) Each section of the final report focuses on how trends, challenges, and emerging technologies will inform and impact practice, leadership, and policy.
TRENDS
The 2015 report (Johnson, Adams Becker, Estrada, & Freeman, 2015) provides six key trends that are projected to accelerate the adoption of technologies within higher education. In three time periods, they are:
* Short-term (1-2 years): increased use of blended learning and the redesign of learning spaces.
* Mid-term (3-4 years): growing focus on measurement of learning and proliferation of open educational resources.
* Long-term: advancing cultures of change and innovation and greater cross-institutional collaboration.
Short-Term
The increased use of blended learning is driven by the shift in student and educator perceptions of the value of online learning. The National Center for Education Statistics Distance Education (US Department of Education, 2014) noted that, according to 2012 data, 1 in 10 students were enrolled exclusively in online courses. In contrast, 2013 data revealed that 1 in 8 students took all their courses online (Poulin & Straut, 2015). Allen and Seaman (2015) reported that 7.1 million students in the United States are engaged in online learning. A growing body of research supports the efficacy and effectiveness of online learning and the benefits of blending learning.
The redesign of learning spaces to accommodate the growing use of technologies is not a new concept. In 2006, I wrote an article on "think spots" that highlighted the need to break out of the mold of traditional classrooms (Skiba, 2006). Now, with the emergence of mobile and smart technologies as well as an emphasis on active and collaborative learning strategies, there is renewed interest in creating new learning spaces for the transformation of higher education. Two resources that may be helpful to find best practices in active learning design are FLEXspace (https://flexspaceannouncements.wordpress.com) and Learning Space Collaboratory (http://www.pkallsc.org).
Mid-Term
Data science, learning analytics, and big data are all driving forces behind the measurement of learning. As in business and health care, the harvesting of data to predict, market, and manage are standard operating procedures. The goals, according the report (Johnson et al., 2015, p. 12), are "to build better pedagogies, empower students to take an active part in their learning, target at-risk student populations, and assess factors affecting completion and student success." The report states that for learners, educators, and researchers, "learning analytics [are] already starting to provide crucial insights into student progress and interaction with online texts, courseware, and learning environments used to deliver instruction."
We now see examples of how students use dashboards to improve their learning. Administrators also use them, to direct strategic planning, and educators use them, to manage advisees and analyze the impact of their teaching on learning. It was noted that the measurement of learning has the greatest impact on policy.
Long-Term
The idea that innovations in education can scale better when shared across institutions is the basis for the long-term trend of cross-institutional collaboration. Universities are aligning with others to share resources for teaching, research, and technology infrastructure. In nursing, the NEXus (Nursing Education Xchange, http://www.winnexus.org/about) started in the mid-2000s as a means of sharing doctoral courses across universities in western states. It has broadened to include schools and colleges of nursing throughout the United States.
Thought leaders in higher education have noted that the role of the university is transitioning from knowledge disseminator to incubator for new discoveries and innovations. The role of the university is impacting not only local economies, but also global economies: "To breed innovation and adapt to economic needs, higher education institutions must be structured in ways that allow for flexibility, and spur creativity and entrepreneurial thinking" (Johnson et al., 2015, p. 8).
CHALLENGES
Challenges also fall into three categories:
* Solvable (those we understand and know how to solve): blending of informal/formal learning and improving digital literacy.
* Difficult (those we may or may not understand but solutions are elusive): personalized learning and teaching complex thinking.
* Wicked (those that are complex to define, and even more complex to solve): competing models of education and rewards for teaching.
Solvable
In the Connected Age, we have access to knowledge at our fingertips, promoting the notion of informal and formal learning in classroom, online, and experiential venues. These venues are expanded through social media, allowing learners to create their own learning pathways. As I noted previously, "The bottom line is that learning pathways are about connecting the dots - in the classroom, online, or even with people and places outside the traditional academic environment" (Skiba, 2014b, p. 63).
As we become more and more dependent on technology, it is equally important to ensure that faculty and students add digital literacy to their repertoire of knowledge and skills. Murray and Perez (2014) point out that digital literacy means more than knowing how to use technology. It means being able to use technologies to leverage innovation and transformation. We must prepare our students for data visualization literacy as well (Skiba, 2014a).
Difficult
The difficult category focuses on teaching complex thinking and personalized learning. We need to prepare students to understand complexity, systems, and increasingly complex health care issues. This also means we need to examine how we can personalize education and avoid the limits of "one size fits all." Given large class sizes and the looming NCLEX exam, it is too easy to fall back on traditional methods of teaching, such as lecture and multiple-choice tests, that do not espouse complex thinking.
Wicked
In the wicked challenge category, we have the persistent, longstanding problem of how to reward teachers and recognize and value teaching as much as we value research and scholarship. With the current composition of adjunct faculty in many institutions, it is even harder to implement a change in the culture for rewarding teaching. The focus on research and discoveries is a strategic initiative for many institutions as we move toward the long-term trend to advance a culture of change and innovation.
New educational models that open access to courses (MIT Open Courseware and MOOCS, or Massively Open Online Courses) and competency-based degree programs that provide more flexible pathways are disrupting to the current state of higher education. These alternative models challenge the traditions of the academy and critics are quick to highlight their limitations. But, with more research being conducted on alternative models, we will at some point have evidence to determine their effectiveness in terms of learning, employment, and lifelong learning strategies.
EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES
This is my favorite category in the Horizon Report. See the Table for highlights from the 2015 process and emerging technologies for 2013 and 2014. Note that we have seen some entries before, like the flipped classroom, which is becoming more common in higher education. But some prospects are brand new and exciting.
BYOD is everywhere, so it is not surprising that "bring your own device" is on the short-term horizon. I originally designed my online courses for the desktop and had to evolve them for tablets and smartphones. I will soon be adapting them for use on smart watches, as wearable technologies have transitioned from the long-term to a mid-term horizon.
The Connected Age is part of the Internet of Things and as we look to the horizon, we will see that these connections expand to the Internet of Everything (IOE), which is "comprised of machine-to-machine (M2M), machine-to-person (M2P) and person-to-person (P2P) networked tech-nologies" (Johnson et al., 2015, p. 46). Imagine nursing students doing a clinical practicum within an IOE environment that employs hypersituating. Hypersituation is used to describe how "learners that carry connected devices with them can benefit from a host of interdisciplinary information that is pushed to them from their surroundings" (Johnson et al., 2015, p. 47). Students would use context-aware objects to help facilitate their problem-solving and decision-making, and preceptors would be freed from having to chase from student to student to ensure patient safety. Objects in the patient's room would inform students of patients' preferences for their care as well as potential concerns, such as patient falls.
Perhaps the most interesting entry this year is MakerSpaces, "Engaging learners in creative, higher-order problem solving through hands-on design, construction and iteration" (Johnson et al., 2015, p. 40). MakerSpaces are not just popular with computer hackers, they are catching on in higher education, industry, and health care. My trusted resource, 7 Things You Should Know About [horizontal ellipsis] (https://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/eli7095.pdf), defines makerspaces as a "physical location where people gather to share resources and knowledge, work on projects, network, and build."
The concept originated with the first Maker Faire in 2006. As an outgrowth of the do-it-yourself movement, Maker Faires are every-where. Here are some examples:
* The White House sponsored a Maker Faire in 2014 (http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/curriculum/2014/06/white_house_hosts_first_maker_).
* Harvard Graduate School of Education's Agency by Design Project is investigating the impact of the MakerSpace movement on learning (https://www.gse.harvard.edu/news/uk/14/10/learning-making).
* The US Army's Telemedicine and Advanced Technology Research Center teamed up with Carnegie Mellon University Entertainment Technology Center and Parallax Inc. to sponsor a makerspace-type competition to create the next generation of medical innovations. (See a list of the 2013 winners of this competition at http://learn.parallax.com/micromedic.)
* There is even funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation "to create a prototype makerspace within a hospital setting where nurses and other staff members can test ideas and invent medical technologies and devices to improve the quality of care in acute settings" (http://www.rwjf.org/en/library/grants/2013/05/designing-a-hospital-makerspace-to).
Over the summer break, take a peek at some excellent resources available on MakerSpaces. Aside from Educause's "7 Things You Should Know," see the newsletter of the National Network of Libraries in Medicine (http://nnlm.gov/mar/newsletter/2015/02/makerspaces-could-be-in-your-librarys-fut) and the Librarian's Guide to MakerSpaces (http://oedb.org/ilibrarian/a-librarians-guide-to-maker-spaces/). And, if there is a local Maker Faire, be sure to check it out.
Wouldn't it be great to have MakerSpaces as a part of an NLN meeting? Think about the collective creativity of educators to solve nursing education issues. As always, if you have experienced MakerSpaces or any of these emerging technologies, email me at mailto:[email protected].
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