NMC Horizon Report: 2013 Higher Education Edition

The New Media Consortium (NMC) Horizon Report is an unbiased source of information that helps education leaders, trustees, policy makers, and others easily understand the impact of key emerging technologies on education, and when they are likely to enter mainstream use.

The 2013 Horizon Report is a decade-long research project designed to identify and describe emerging technologies likely to have an impact on learning, teaching, and creative inquiry in higher education. Six emerging technologies are identified across three adoption horizons over the next one to five years, as well as key trends and challenges expected to continue over the same period, giving campus leaders and practitioners a valuable guide for strategic technology planning.

Time-to-Adoption Horizon: One Year or Less

• Massively Open Online Courses (MOOCs)
• Tablet Computing

Time-to-Adoption Horizon: Two to Three Years

• Games and Gamification
• Learning Analytics

Time-to-Adoption Horizon: Four to Five Years

• 3D Printing
• Wearable Technology

Paul Halpern Presents "Edge of the Universe"

Chat with Paul Halpern, Professor of Physics at USciences and the author of 13 popular science books, about the frontiers of scientific knowledge about the universe. It will be your chance to ask him questions about dark matter, dark energy, the holographic principle, time travel, dark flow, black holes, the fate of the cosmos, or anything else you've wondered about the universe.


MARK YOUR CALENDAR!
This live and interactive discussion of modern ideas in cosmology will be available on Thursday, December 6, from 3:00PM – 4:00PM EST on Shindig (a new video chat platform for giving online readings, talks or interviews in front of an online audience).


For more information on Paul's book, please visit: http://edgeofuniverse.com

The NMC Horizon Report > 2012 Higher Education Edition

The NMC Horizon Report 2012 Higher Education Edition is a collaborative effort between the NMC and the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI), an EDUCUASE Program. This ninth edition describes annual findings from the NMC Horizon Project, a decade-long research project designed to identify and describe emerging technologies likely to have an impact on learning, teaching, and creative inquiry in higher education. Six emerging technologies are identified across three adoption horizons over the next one to five years, as well as key trends and challenges expected to continue over the same period, giving campus leaders and practitioners a valuable guide for strategic technology planning.

Find out more and download The Horizon Report: Higher Education Edition.

Blended Learning is Better than Face-to-Face Learning

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Now that I have your attention with that controversial subject line, I’d like to share with you findings from a large meta-analysis that was presented at the Educause ELI Annual Meeting this week. Dr. Barbara Means (Director, Center for Technology in Learning, SRI International) presented the following:

The main findings from the meta-analysis¹ was that classes with online learning (whether taught completely online or blended) on average produce stronger student learning outcomes than classes with solely face-to-face instruction. The mean effect size² was +0.20, p < .001.

Furthermore:

• There was no significant difference between students learning purely online compared with those learning the same material through traditional face-to-face instruction (mean effect size +0.05, favoring online but not significant)

• Blended instruction (combining online and face-to-face elements) had a larger advantage relative to purely face-to-face (mean effect size +0.35, favoring blended, p < .0001)

• Effect sizes were larger for studies in which the online instruction was collaborative or instructor-directed than in those studies where online learners worked independently

View Dr. Means ELI presentation: Blended Learning Designs: A Learning Science Perspective

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¹ U.S. Department of Education, Office of Planning, Evaluation, and Policy Development, Evaluation of Evidence-Based Practices in Online Learning: A Meta-Analysis and Review of Online Learning Studies, Washington, D.C., 2010: http://www2.ed.gov/rschstat/eval/tech/evidence-based-practices/finalreport.pdf.

² An effect size is similar to a z-score in that it is expressed in terms of units of standard deviation. It is defined as the difference between the treatment and control means, divided by the pooled standard deviation.

2011 Horizon Report from Educause & The New Media Consortium

Each year, the Horizon Report describes six areas of emerging technology that will have significant impact on higher education and creative expression over the next one to five years. The areas of emerging technology cited for 2011 are:

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Time to adoption: One Year or Less

• Electronic Books
• Mobiles

Time to adoption: Two to Three Years

• Augmented Reality
• Game-based Learning

Time to adoption: Four to Five Years

• Gesture-based Computing
• Learning Analytics

View the complete Horizon Report (1.5Mb PDF)