Whilst researching a project I am currently undertaking on student retention in the HE and FE sectors, I came across the Horizon Project from an organisation called the New Media Consortium (NMC).
The Horizon Project charts the landscape of emerging technologies for teaching, learning and information management in the education sector and produces yearly reports which track emerging technologies that could make a significant difference to education over the next few years.
Take a look at the following video from NMC which gives an overview of the latest NMC report.
Of particular interest to me was that NMC have, for the first time, produced a regional report covering emerging technologies in the UK further and higher education sector. This report was produced in cooperation with the JISC Innovation Support Centres, CETIS and UKOLN.
The report highlights 12 technologies to watch which could make a significant difference to UK FE and HE over the next few years:
One year or less
- Cloud computing
- Mobiles
- Open Content
- Tablet Computing
Two to three years
- Game-based Learning
- Learning Analytics
- New Scholarship
- Semantic Applications
Four to Five Years
- Augmented Reality
- Collective Intelligence
- Smart Objects
- Telepresence
You can download the report directly from the JISC website.
Its interesting to compare the tech short list which made it into the UK report, with those in the NMC Global Report. In particular ebooks made it into the Global Report but not
onto the UK version. Given the rise of ebooks in the consumer market, you would have expected that this would have a significant impact to how students access books and other learning material. If you’re interested in what the UK report team thought about ebooks and other tech trends which didn’t make it onto the shortlist, the NMC Horizon Project JISC Wiki gives a description of all of the technology which was considered and also includes all the contributors comments and thoughts.
Take a look at the report and let us know at Tribal Labs what you think about its findings. If you use either of Tribal’s FE and HE information management solutions for this sector (ebs4 for FE and SITS:Vision for HE) you may have views and ideas of how these emerging technologies should shape our solutions. Please drop us a line, we would be very pleased to hear from you!