Top-Ten IT Issues for Higher Education

http://www.educause.edu/research-and-publications/research/top-10-it-issues

From the EDUCAUSE (the association for higher education IT) IT Issues Panel (a spectrum of IT leaders across higher education), a list of the major IT issues facing higher education. The issues spring forth, in part, from forces external to higher education --

rapidly evolving consumer technology, e-learning, software applications, big data and data- and text-analysis software, and data visualization; the global recession; changing student demographics (more part-time, older, and non-residential students) --

that the panel sees as shaping four strategic priorities: 

1. Contain and reduce costs 
2. Achieve demonstrable improvements in student outcomes
3. Keep pace with innovations in e-learning and use e-learning as a competitive advantage
4. Meet students' and faculty members' expectations of contemporary consumer technologies and communications 

See the link for the full article and associated materials. 

INteractive graphic depicting issues trends year-to-year, 2000-2013

Generation Touch

"Generation Touch." This resonates -- "This generation has grown up differently than everyone who came before it (including me). They have grown up in a world of constant mobile connectedness. They are as different from prior generations as were Baby Boomers who grew up with the first televisions, and earlier generations who grew up with the very first cars or electricity. They have never really known a world without Internet, mobile devices or social media."

See this piece by Josh Elman in TechCrunch -- 

Generation Touch Will Redraw Consumer Tech

Ten years ago, young adults and those in their late teens were among the fastest and earliest adopters of new social networks — Friendster, Myspace, and ultimately Facebook — and many other products that define us today. So we should be looking to today’s generation, who people often refer to as Millennials, to predict how we will all live and connect 10+ years from now. This generation has grown up differently than everyone who came before it (including me). They have grown up in a world of constant mobile connectedness. They are as different from prior generations as were Baby Boomers who grew up with the first televisions, and earlier generations who grew up with the very first cars or electricity. They have never really known a world without Internet, mobile devices or social media.

In the past decade alone, many of the fundamentals of technology have changed, and as a result, so has this generation’s priorities:

• This generation owns and carries significantly more mobile phones than desktop or laptop computers.
• In a recent study, 65 percent of teens polled would rather go without a car than their mobile phone.
• Interfaces are radically different: no longer are terms such as "keyboard shortcuts," "save," or even "click" as relevant as terms such as "gestures," "share," and "tap." [I would add, "swipe."]
• As people are always connected (both to the Internet and to each other socially), there is less and less sense of privacy than ever before.

I like to call this group “Generation Touch” or GenT. 

Article continues at link. 

Tech Trends Higher Education Cannot Afford to Ignore

Via Education Drive (". . . an industry dashboard designed to keep education professionals connected with information that is critical to their jobs."), Davide Savenije summarizes the keynote address at the July 2013 Campus Technology Conference by Lev Gonick, the VP for Information Technology Services and CIO at Case Western Reserve University. 

12 tech trends higher education cannot afford to ignore

Gonick: "The challenge I’m going to present to you, as the revolutionaries out there, is that it’s not anymore—or perhaps never was—simply sufficient to say that we were there at the beginning," Gonick said during his opening remarks. "What really needs to be considered here is, what are the challenges that we face and how can we remain engaged in that vanguard role while, at the same time, figuring out what we want to hold onto from the past. Not only in terms of technology, but also in terms of the core services that our institutions provide to the broader initiatives in society, because, as these mutations unfold, there are certain things we want preserved and we have to be very clear about what the value [is] of the things we want to preserve along the way."

Here are the trends, as reported by Savenije:

1. The death of the personal computer. [I'm not so sure; I don't know that I would write this blog piece on a smartphone or tablet.]
2. The proliferation of mobile devices
3. The rise of social networks 
4. The next generation of networks Lev Gonick
5. The privatization of the cloud
6. The valuation of _____-as-a-service. (For example, research computing.) 
7. The promise of big data
8. The implementation of the flipped classroom
9. The future of the learning space
10. The legitimization of online learning
11. The evolution of the college campus (that it links more with the communities around it)
12. The adnent of the urban operation system

 Story continues at link. 

(More on Gonick.)

Disruptive Technologies

The McKinsey Global Institute is the business and economics research division of the McKinsey & Company consultancy. In May 2013, it issued "Disruptive technologies: Advances that will transform life, business, and the global economy." The executive summary and full report are available here.  

Disruptive technologies are described as those that are rapidly advancing or experiencing breakthroughs, have broad potential scope of impact, or have significant or disruptive economic impact.

What twelve disruptive technologies are listed? From the executive summary:

1. Mobile internet
2. Automation of knowledge work (e.g., call centers --"Advances in artificial intelligence, machine learning, and natural user interfaces (e.g., voice recognition) are making it possible to automate many knowledge worker tasks that have long been regarded as impossible or impractical for machines to perform. For instance, some computers can answer “unstructured” questions (i.e., those posed in ordinary language, rather than precisely written as software queries), so employees or customers without specialized training can get  information on their own.")
3. The Internet of Things (see tag) 
4. Cloud technology -- for applications and data
5. Advanced robotics 
6. Next-gen genomics 
7. Autonomous and near-autonomous vehicles 
8. Energy storage (including batteries) 
9. 3-D printing
10. Advanced materials (e.g. those that are self-healing or self cleaning) 
11. Advanced oil and gas exploration and recovery 
12. Renewable energy

The report also lists five technologies that nearly made the final list (next-generation nuclear (fission), fusion power, carbon sequestration, advanced water purification, quantum computing) and other "interesting and often hyped" technologies that weren't close in the final running (private space flight, OLED/LED lighting, wireless charging, flexible displays, 3-D and volumetric displays). 

Disruptive Technologies

Many of these are already being called out here, but here is a handy chart from the Alitmeter Group's Jeremiah Owyang: a list of "Disruptive Technologies" along the y-axis and, on the x-axis, Description and Example. 

Index of 2013 Disruptive Technologies
 
One Line Goal:  List disruptive technologies in 2013 on one page, with your help in the comments.
The number of technologies that are creating disruptions to companies and ecosystems are increasing at an alarming rate. Even though Altimeter rated the technologies that matter from last week’s SXSW, we see even more technologies emerging on the heels of mobile world congress, and CES. Expect even more technologies to emerge, radically altering the power shift of those who use these technologies to gain power over existing institutions.

In an attempt to track and then analyze these technologies, I’ll host the following “industry index”, where I list out examples, and the community adds to it in comments. I’ve done this multiple times over previous years, which often results in discrete research projects, market definition reports, and ratings and rankings of technology vendors.

I’ve kicked off the list with 10 technologies I see (with help from colleague Chris Silva), and at Altimeter, we’ve embarked on looking at research themes that impact business. With your help through the comments, we can keep this list updated for the year.

Full matrix at the link.