Key Trends & Technologies Impacting Higher Ed: The 2016 Horizon Report

Micka, Tracy.

INFO266, Fall 2016

Johnson, L., Adams Becker, S., Cummins, M., Estrada, V., Freeman, A., and Hall, C. (2016). NMC Horizon Report: 2016 Higher Education Edition. Austin, Texas: The New Media Consortium. Retrieved from http://www.nmc.org/publication/nmc-horizon-report-2016-higher-education-edition/

The highly respected Horizon Report (Higher Education edition) for 2016 has been released, highlighting the trends, challenges, and technology that will impact higher education over the next five years. The key trends accelerating technology adoption can be summarized as:

1. Advancing cultures of innovation:  Using technology as a catalyst, universities aim to foster a Silicon Valley startup / entrepreneurial culture in order to drive innovation that will have practical / commercial outcomes for the local community and even the global workplace.
2. Rethinking how institutions work: Research shows a gap between the needs of the 21st century economy and how students are currently being prepared for the workplace. Cross-disciplinary approaches and new competency-based credentialing programs are made possible by technology and work to expand educational opportunities while also enhancing the employability of graduates.
3. Redesigning Learning Spaces: Physical spaces on campus must accommodate the new pedagogies of student-centered, active learning which is project-based and hands-on, calling for multiple devices, mobility, collaboration, lots of bandwidth, and remote access. These new spaces mimic real-world work environments, not lecture halls.
4. Shift to deeper learning approaches: Critical thinking, problem-solving, collaboration and self-directed learning are the new buzzwords articulating the cornerstones of modern education. All of this works to help students make connections between their education and the real world. Technology- namely the internet, but also web 2.0 tools, virtual reality, robotics and even 3D printers- enables deeper learning by giving students unprecedented access to information, otherwise remote experts/practitioners, and to each other to collaborate, create, and share to an authentic audience.
5. Growing focus on measured learning: Data mining software, and the prevalence of online programs and learning management systems provide the basis for massive data gathering that feeds a growing industry in analytics and changes in student assessment. With the trend toward better matching student skills with workplace needs, assessment is morphing from measuring rote learning to tracking competency-based learning goals. Protecting student privacy in the midst of this data mining is a key factor for policy leaders.
6. Increasing use of blended learning designs: Online learning is gaining traction in colleges and universities as technology and multimedia make high quality, low-cost, and even free learning objects/content available. By integrating face-to-face classes with online offerings, universities can offer greater affordability, accessibility, and more personalization.  

The following six technologies have been selected as ones likely to have real impact in higher education over the short, medium, and long term:

1. BYOD (Short Term; 1 yr or less)
2. Learning Analytics and Adaptive Learning (Short Term; 1 yr or less)
3. Augmented and Virtual Reality (Medium Term; 2-3 yrs)
4. Makerspaces (Medium Term; 2-3 yrs)
5. Affective Computing (Long Term; 4-5 yrs)
6. Robotics (Long Term; 4-5 yrs)

My comments:

Understandably, I see a lot of overlap between the K-12 and the higher ed reports. Namely, the trends of attention to deeper learning and redesigning learning spaces, since everyone is rethinking how these institutions (schools and universities) work. As far as technology developments, both institutions will be impacted by makerspaces, robotics & virtual reality, and online learning which provides useful analytics to boost learning outcomes, but which needs to be balanced by privacy concerns. All in all, education is changing dramatically, fueled by disruptive technologies and the new pedagogies that spring from them.

Use of Collection Development Policies in Electronic Resource Management

Pozzebon, S. (2012). Use of collection development policies in electronic resource management.

            Collection Building, 31(3), 108-114. doi: 10.1108/01604951211243506

Pozzebon provides an analysis of collection development policies in academic libraries. Many policies are not equipped to address e-resources. Many policies, surprisingly, only address specific portions of the collections held. The reason for the tendency to create incomplete collection development policy is to avoid constantly changing policies to accommodate changing content. The author suggests that policy should be made complete and updated as much as possible because of the changing content.

Beyond the scanned image: A needs assessment of scholarly users of digital collections

Kimura, Camden

Green, H.E., & Courtney, A. (2015). Beyond the scanned image: A needs assessment of scholarly users of digital collections. College & Research Libraries, 76(5), 690-707. doi:10.5860/crl.76.5.690

Summary: In this article, Green and Courtney (2015) report the results of their research on the needs of faculty in digital collections. Through the course of interviews with fine arts faculty and a survey of English and history faculty, they discovered that digital collections are not created with faculty needs in mind. Among the highest needs for image, text, and multimedia collections were better metadata, searchability, searchable text, and the ability to download images and multimedia (Green and Courtney, 2015, p. 695).  Overall, these interviewed and surveyed academics were not satisfied by the functionality of the digital collections that they used. This has very little to do with content, but rather with usability.  Green and Courtney conclude that digital collections need a “user-centered focus” to be of most use to academics (2015, p. 701).

Evaluation: The bad: this research probably has interesting results and implications, but Green and Courtney watered down the presentation of results so much that there is not nearly enough information for the reader to do much of anything. I would have liked more information so I could properly assess whether or not their conclusions were reasonable or even have some deeper context for their conclusions. The good: what little they do present in the paper is extremely valuable for those creating and curating digital collections, even outside of academia; usability is the most important part of digital collections. Green and Courtney conclude that users must be engaged at nearly every point in the creation of digital collections. I think this is good (albeit a bit obvious) advice for any creating digital collections. We must be first with concerned users, almost over content; if our digital collections are not created in such a way that users can use the collection the way they need to, then we have failed to create a good digital collection. Once we have determined what the users need and especially how the users will be using the collection, then we can focus on curating content. This will create the best digital collection for our users.