Critical Challenges

From Horizon Project

2009 Short List [edit] Time-to-Adoption: One year or Less Mobiles Cloud Computing Collaborative Environments Paperless Publishing [edit] Time-to-Adoption: Two to Three Years Geo-Everything The Personal Web 3D Virtual Worlds Alternative Input Devices [edit] Time-to-Adoption: Four to Five Years Semantic-Aware Applications 3D Telepresence Thin Screens, Flexible Interfaces Smart Objects [edit] Critical Challenges [edit] Key Trends

• There is a growing need for formal instruction in key new skills, including information literacy, visual literacy, and technological literacy. The skills involved in writing and research have changed from those required even a few years ago. Students need to be technologically adept, to be able to collaborate with peers all over the world, to understand basic content and media design, and to understand the relationship between apparent function and underlying code in the applications they use daily. Questions of assessment and support of new literacies across the curriculum continue to surface.

• The generational skills gap between educators and students remains a hurdle. Some faculty have sophisticated skills working with information technology, but many (particularly in the humanities) feel overwhelmed by the shift to digital. Likewise, some students are much more savvy when working with technology than others. Faculty development plans that can keep pace with youth culture are required, as is some way to leverage those who have necessary skills to help those that don’t.

• Students are different, but a lot of educational material isn't. Schools are still using materials developed to teach the students of decades ago, but today's students are actually very different in the way they think and work. Institutions need to adapt to current student needs and identify new learning models that are engaging to younger generations. Assessment, likewise, has not kept pace with new modes of working, and must change along with teaching methods, tools, and materials.

• Significant shifts are taking place in the ways scholarship & research are conducted, and a there is a need for innovation and leadership at all levels of the academy. Academic review and faculty rewards are increasingly out of sync. Clear practices for assessing emerging forms of scholarly practice are needed for tenure and promotion. Students who are living and learning with technologies that generate dynamic forms of content may find the current formalism and structure of scholarship and research to be static and “dead” as a way of collecting, analyzing and sharing results.

• We are expected, especially in public education, to measure and prove though formal assessment that our students are learning. Data collection and mining of student information systems will be required for accreditation, and institutions will need to be able to collect, manage, sort, and retrieve data of all kinds. The systems currently in place are not capable of managing electronic data on the scale that is anticipated.

• Higher education is facing a growing expectation to make use of and to deliver services, content, and media to mobile devices. This challenge is even more true today than it was when it first appeared in the Horizon Report two years ago. As new devices continue to make content almost as easy to access and view on a mobile as on a computer, and as ever more engaging applications take advantage of new interface technologies like accelerometers and multi-touch screens, the applications for mobiles continue to grow. This is more than merely an expectation to provide content: this is an opportunity for higher education to reach its constituents in new and compelling ways, in addition to the obvious anytime, anywhere benefits of these ubiquitous devices.