Trends in 2014 Forward: NMC Horizon Report

I think this is one of highlights of the year: the release of the annual NMC Horizon Report, Higher Education Edition. It's an absolute must-read for anyone who works in higher education, libraries, IT, education. 

NMC = New Media Consortium, "an international community of experts in educational technology — from the practitioners who work with new technologies on campuses every day; to the visionaries who are shaping the future of learning at think tanks, labs, and research centers; to its staff and board of directors; to the advisory boards and others helping the NMC conduct cutting edge research." (See here.)

From the announcement: 

The NMC and EDUCAUSE [the association for higher education IT] Learning Initiative (ELI) jointly released the NMC Horizon Report > 2014 Higher Education Edition at a special session at the ELI Annual Meeting 2014. This eleventh edition describes annual findings from the NMC Horizon Project, an ongoing research project designed to identify and describe emerging technologies likely to have an impact on learning, teaching, and creative inquiry in education. Six key trends, six significant challenges, and six emerging technologies are identified across three adoption horizons over the next one to five years, giving campus leaders and practitioners a valuable guide for strategic technology planning. The format of the report is new this year, providing these leaders with more in-depth insight into how the trends and challenges are accelerating and impeding the adoption of educational technology, along with their implications for policy, leadership and practice.

Both the full report (52 pages) and the preview (seven pages) are available here.

Here are the six trends, six challenges, and six emerging technologies: 

I. Key Trends Accelerating Ed Tech Adoption in Higher Education

• Fast Moving Trends: Those likely to create substantive change (or burn out) in one to two years
  • ! Online, Hybrid, and Collaborative Learning 
  • ! Social Media Use in Learning
• Mid-Range Trends: Those likely to take three to five years to create substantive change
  • ! The Creator Society 
  • ! Data-Driven Learning and Assessment 
• Slow Trends: Those likely to take more than five years to create substantive change
  • ! Agile Approaches to Change
  • ! Making Online Learning Natural

II. Significant Challenges Impeding Ed Tech Adoption in Higher Education

• Urgent Challenges: Those which we both understand and know how to solve
  • ! Low Digital Fluency of Faculty 
  • ! Relative Lack of Rewards for Teaching 
• Difficult Challenges: Those we understand but for which solutions are elusive
  • ! Competition from New Models of Education
  • ! Scaling Teaching Innovations 
• Wicked Challenges: Those that are complex to even define, much less address
  • ! Expanding Access 
  • ! Keeping Education Relevant

III. Important Developments in Educational Technology for Higher Education

• Time-to-Adoption Horizon: One Year or Less
  • ! Flipped Classroom
  • ! Learning Analytics 
• Time-to-Adoption Horizon: Two to Three Years
  • ! 3D Printing
  • ! Games and Gamification
• Time-to-Adoption Horizon: Four to Five Years
  • ! Quantified Self
  • ! Virtual Assistants 

Read the full report(s)!