NMC Horizon Report 2013

The publication of this report is an important event every year. It's a must-read for anyone even remotely connected to education and IT.

NMC = New Media Consortium. The NMC Horizon Report is a product of a collaboration between NMC and the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative. 

From the executive summary of the full report: 

Welcome to the NMC Horizon Report, a series of publications designed to help education leaders, policy makers, and faculty understand new and emerging technologies, and their potential impact on teaching, learning, and research. This specific volume, the NMC Horizon Report: 2013 Higher Education Edition, is framed specifically around the unique needs and circumstances of higher education institutions, and looks at that landscape with a global lens over the next five years.

The internationally recognized NMC Horizon Report series and regional NMC Technology Outlooks are part of the NMC Horizon Project, a comprehensive research venture established in 2002 that identifies and describes emerging technologies likely to have a large impact over the coming five years in education around the globe. Since 2005, this particular edition has been produced via a collaborative effort with the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative, and examines emerging technologies for their potential impact on teaching, learning, and creative inquiry within the higher education environment.

To create the report, an international body of experts in education, technology, and other fields was convened as an advisory board. The group engaged in discussions around a set of research questions intended to surface significant trends and challenges and to identify a wide array of potential technologies for the report. This dialog was enriched by an extensive range of resources, current research, and practice that drew on the expertise of both the NMC community and the communities of the members of the advisory board. These interactions among the advisory board are the focus of the NMC Horizon Report research, and this report details the areas in which these experts were in strong agreement.

The report opens with a discussion of the trends and challenges identified by the advisory board as most important for the next five years. The main section highlights six promising technological areas and their practical, real-world applications in higher education settings. Each section is introduced with an overview that defines the topic, followed by a discussion of the particular relevance of the topic to teaching, learning, and creative inquiry in higher education. Next, several concrete examples are provided that demonstrate how the technology is being used. Finally, each section closes with an annotated list of suggested readings that expand on the discussion in the report. 

I encourage you to read the full report -- or at least its executive summary (five pages) and the preview. 

• Time-to-Adoption Horizon: One Year or Less 
  • Massively Open Online Courses
  • Tablet Computing
• Time-to-Adoption Horizon: Two to Three Years
  • Big Data and Learning Analytics
  • Game-Based Learning
• Time-to-Adoption Horizon: Four to Five Years
  • 3D Printing
  • Wearable Technology

Update on Tuesday, February 5, 2013 at 04:37PM by williamgarrity

Here's an extended review of the report in Campus Technology -- "6 Technologies That Will Impact Higher Ed."