NMC Horizon Report 2015 (Pt. 4 of 6): Potential, Bringing Your Own Device & Flipping Classrooms in the One-Year Horizon

It would be easy, while immersed in New Media Consortium (NMC) Horizon Project reports, to miss a critically important word: potential. But that’s the word—and the world—we explore as we move into the “Important Developments in Educational Technology” section of NMC’s Horizon Report > 2015 Higher Education Edition: the six technologies, including Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) and, for the second consecutive year, the Flipped Classroom model, “have the potential to foster real changes in education, particularly in the development of progressive pedagogies and learning strategies; the organization of teachers’ work; and the arrangement and delivery of content,” Report co-authors Samantha Adams Becker, Alex Freeman, and Victoria Estrada remind us (p. 35).

As always, the six highlighted technologies are placed within specific time frames (BYOD and the Flipped Classroom model within a time-to-adoption horizon of one year or less in higher education settings; makerspaces and wearable technology within a two- to three-year adoption horizon; and adaptive learning technologies and the Internet of Things within a four- to five-year adoption horizon).

As we saw when reviewing the 2014 Higher Education Edition, the Flipped Classroom model—with its use of brief lectures online to free up students and learning facilitators for learner-centric experiential learning/project-based learning opportunities in onsite (or online) learning spaces—has repercussions that extend far beyond formal learning settings in higher education. It is already extending further and further into our lifelong learning landscape from its roots as a response to the need to reach young students who otherwise couldn’t be present for classroom lectures; workplace learning and performance (staff training) programs are also looking at how the Flipped Classroom model builds upon what is already in place and extends learning opportunities in the workplace—and beyond, if we consider the way in which learners within connectivist massive open online courses (MOOCs) initially watch videos and engage in other learning opportunities before coming together online to engage in collaborative learning opportunities.

It’s when we take the time to see the repercussions of this simple yet far-reaching flip that we begin to also see how interwoven the content is throughout the 2015 Higher Education Edition. In viewing the Key Trends section, we explored advancing cultures of change and innovation along with the increasing use of blended learning and an increasing focus on redesigning learning spaces. While viewing the Key Challenges section, we explored efforts at personalizing learning and blending formal and informal learning. And as we now focus on the Flipped Classroom model, we see how that flip leads us to respond to the need for redesigned learning spaces that foster more personalized as well as collaborative learning, embrace cultures of change and innovation, blend formal and informal learning opportunities, and even engage in additional explorations of teacher-trainer-learning facilitators in the learning process. Our colleagues in the Flipped Learning Network offer one possible framework centered on a combination of flexible environments, learning cultures, intentional content, and evolving roles for professional educators (and other trainer-teacher-learners). Clyde Freeman Herreid and Nancy Schiller offer us “Case Studies and the Flipped Classroom.” And our colleagues at the New Media Consortium remind us that there is still plenty of potential to nurture.

The second technology included in that one-year-or-less-to-adoption timeframe, Bring Your Own Device, has equally far-reaching and abundantly-noted implications. As the Report co-writers note, increasingly large numbers of learners are bringing their own tech devices into our learning and work spaces. BYOD, furthermore, reduces overall spending, by organizations, on technology; increases productivity among those who are using their own (familiar) devices rather than having to spend time learning other (unfamiliar) devices; provides each user-learner with the personally-chosen content installed on those personal tech devices; and also creates potential disparities in learning and in workplace opportunities and performance among those who are not able to afford to provide their own devices. Perusing resources cited within the 2015 Higher Education Edition, we find plenty of guidance on how we can get the best devices into higher education and how innovative learning spaces incorporate BYOD into learning. Armed with this information and sensitive to the challenges, we’re better prepared to respond to the potential provided by BYOD while also working to address the challenges is poses in our learning and work environments.

NB: This is part of a series of articles exploring the latest Horizon Report. Next: On the Mid-Range Horizon—Makerspaces and Wearable Technology

NMC Horizon Report 2015 (Pt. 1 of 6): Bursting Through Its Virtual Covers

New Media Consortium (NMC) Horizon Project reports on key trends, significant challenges, and developments in educational technology seem to be bursting beyond the boundaries of their virtual covers in spectacular ways, as the release of the 2015 Higher Education Edition this week makes abundantly clear.

There was a time when reading these free online training-teaching-learning resources involved little more than downloading the documents, taking a couple of hours to absorb the content, and then following a few selected links to learn more about the topics covered. Then the ever-increasing amount of content included within the reports created a need for a video synopsis posted on the New Media Consortium YouTube channel; the lavishly-produced and well-paced 2015 Higher Education Edition video clocks in at nearly seven minutes (compared to just under four minutes for the 2014 Higher Education Edition video). A very helpful infographic that further synthesizes the report through a single well-designed image for those who want to quickly grasp the high points of the report. A chart on page 35 of the report mirrors the online resource that lists the more than 50 technologies followed through the Horizon Project—a great gateway for anyone interested in exploring individual technologies they haven’t yet encountered. Increasingly numerous resources available through endnotes—nearly 300 spread over two pages near the final pages of the latest report—offer information-hungry readers a chance to explore the topics in greater depth. And the usual access to report expert-panel discussions within a well-facilitated wiki make the process of producing the report as transparent as possible while also providing an educational-technology resource unlike any others currently available online.

Simply compiling the endnotes for the report is a magnificent effort in collaboration, report lead writer Samantha Adams Becker explained via a recent email exchange: “Citations are split across three writers/researchers on the NMC team [Becker, Alex Freeman, and Victoria Estrada as co-authors]. Each of us is responsible for writing researching six of the 18 topics in the report. We have a rule to never write anything editorial or in our own opinion—we must back everything up with sources—hence the giant list of citations. We then review each other’s sections and provide feedback for improvement and check each other’s citations. We also have a research manager [Michele Cummins] who finds the further readings for each section, and I check that work as well. So while there are three writers of the report [supported by editor/Horizon Project founder Larry Johnson and Johnson’s co-principal investigator, Malcolm Brown], we meet weekly to critique each other’s work and then turn in revised drafts. I then compile all of our revised drafts into a master document and go over the entire report with a fine-toothed comb, editing for voice, cohesion, etc.”

The results are stimulating discussions of six key trends, six key challenges, and six technological developments expected to “inform policy, leadership, and practice at all levels impacting universities and colleges” in ways that have repercussions for any of us involved in training-teaching-learning within the ever-expanding lifelong learning landscape we inhabit.

Key edtech trends documented within the Horizon Report > 2015 Higher Education Edition as “driving edtech adoption in higher education in five or more years” include “advancing cultures of change and innovation” and “increasing cross-institution collaboration.” Those expected to drive edtech adoption in a three- to five-year horizon include a “growing focus on measuring learning” and a “proliferation of open educational resources.” The short-term one- to two-year horizon includes an “increasing use of blended learning” and attention to “redesigning learning spaces.”

Key challenges impeding technology adoption in higher education within the short-term horizon include “blending formal and informal learning” and “improving digital literacy.” Mid-horizon challenges include those posed by “personalized learning” and “teaching complex thinking.” The “wicked” challenges—those “that are complex to even define, much less address”—include addressing “competing models of education” and finding ways to effectively reward teaching.

Important developments in educational technology for higher education in one year or less include the “bring your own device (BYOD)” movement and, for the second consecutive year, the flipped classroom model. Makerspaces and wearable technology are placed in a two- to three-year time-to-adoption horizon. “Adaptive learning technologies” joins “the Internet of Things” in the four- to five-year horizon.

What all of this means to those of us engaged in lifelong learning efforts will be explored more deeply in the remaining articles in this series of posts. In the meantime, those interested in playing a more active role in the Horizon Report process that many of us currently treasure are encouraged to complete the online application form.

NB: This is the first in a series of articles exploring the latest Horizon Report. Next: Key Trends

Malcolm Knowles, The Adult Learner, and Revisiting Cherished Resources

Reading the sixth edition of The Adult Learner (in which Elwood Holton and Richard Swanson further build upon what Malcolm Knowles wrote in the first four editions) reminds us why the book justifiably carries the subtitle “The Definitive Classic in Adult Education and Human Resource Development” (added to the fifth edition)—and why a seventh edition is also available.

It’s thoughtful. It’s thorough. It’s engaging. It acknowledges its limitations. It surveys a variety of other seminal learning texts produced over a period of several decades and leaves us with nearly 40 pages of additional resources to explore. And, most importantly, it reminds us of how consistently we have identified and sought solutions to the challenges learners of all ages face and also reminds us how far we still have to go in effectively responding to those challenges.

Current calls for finding alternatives to our antiquated approach of facilitating learning through lectures, for example, seem to place us at the cutting edge of contemporary training-teaching-learning efforts—until we reread (on p. 44) an educator’s call, first published in the Journal of Adult Education in 1940, for change: “Not only the content of the courses, but the method of teaching also must be changed. Lectures must be replaced by class exercises in which there is a large share of student participation…” (Harold Fields, acting assistant director of Evening Schools, Board of Education, New York City). Fields might have been fascinated by what Michael Wesch accomplishes through experiential learning with students participating in his mediated cultures projects at Kansas State University. Or by what some of us are experiencing through webinars with interactive learning opportunities for participants rather than relying on the one-way-transmission-of-information model that only occasionally takes a break for brief question-and-answer sessions before returning to the teacher-as-center-of-learning experience and often leaves learners uninspired. Or by the possibilities for engagement in connectivist massive open online courses (MOOCs) if learners are properly prepared to take advantage of what those courses can offer. Or what learners experience through flipped classroom efforts that at least partially move lectures out of the classroom to make space for more engaging experiential learning, with Kahn Academy videos being one highly recognizable example of how the process works.

Furthermore, those of us who mistakenly believe that formal lifelong learning is a new concept precipitated by the need to keep up with our rapidly-changing tech environment gain, from revisiting The Adult Learner, a more accurate appreciation for how long lifelong learning has been part of our learning landscape. We read the observation made by a college president in 1930 in the Journal of Adult Education that “[a]t the other end of the traditional academic ladder the adult educational movement is forcing recognition of the value and importance of continuing the learning process indefinitely”—a lesson some still don’t appear to have absorbed as we read about reduced funding for community college programs that can be an important part of the adult learning landscape. Adult learning, the college president continues, “is recognized not so much as a substitute for inadequate schooling in youth as an educational opportunity superior to that offered in youth…” (p. 41).

Even the term for adult learning—andragogy, as opposed to pedagogy (“the art and science of teaching children”)—that is at the heart of what Knowles built into the first edition of his book has far deeper roots than many of us suspect. The earliest citation found for andragogy was from a German educator who used the term in 1833. Subsequent citations include those from a German social scientist in 1921 and a Swiss psychiatrist in 1951 before Knowles included it in the first edition of what was then titled The Adult Learner: A Neglected Species.

Knowles eventually created the now-familiar model of andragogy grounded in a series of assumptions including the idea that adults “need to know why they need to learn something before undertaking to learn it,” “resent and resist situations in which they feel others are imposing their wills on them,” “become ready to learn…to cope effectively with their real-life situations,” are “task-centered or problem-centered” in their approach to learning, and are effectively motivated by “the desire for increased job satisfaction, self-esteem, quality of life, and the like” (pp. 64-68). I suspect many of us also note the same assumptions with many of the younger learners we serve.

It’s an approach that’s compatible with what others, including Eduard Lindeman, Carl Rogers, and Robert Gagné, have written in their own classic works on learning. It’s an approach that appeals to us at a personal level and that can easily be recognized in our own experiences and drive to remain immersed in learning. And it supports a wonderfully inspiring philosophy expressed by Canadian psychologist Sidney Journard in 1972 and included in The Adult Learner: “Learning is not a task or problem; it is a way to be in the world” (p. 15)—words that might help all of us be more effective in our efforts to facilitate training-teaching-learning that produces positive results.

N.B.: This is the first in a series of reflections on classic training-teaching-learning resources.

eLearning Guild Report: Revisiting Bloom’s Taxonomy in the Digital Age

If trainer-teacher-learners were looking for foundational works within our profession, we probably would quickly turn to Donald Kirkpatrick’s Evaluating Training Programs or Benjamin Bloom’s Taxonomy of Educational Objectives Book 1: Cognitive Domain—better known to most of us as Bloom’s Taxonomy or, more simply, “the Handbook.” So when there is an update along the lines of what Lorin Anderson and his collaborators did for the Taxonomy in 2001, or what Cecilia Munzenmaier offers in a new eLearning Guild Perspectives report, “Bloom’s Taxonomy: What’s Old is New Again,” we know we had better pay attention.

By the time we finish reading the report, we’re glad we did, for Munzenmaier not only provides a first-rate refresher course in the original taxonomy itself, but takes us through a concise discussion of Andrew Churches’ 2009 publication, “Bloom’s Digital Taxonomy,” so we can see how relevant the taxonomy remains to anyone involved in training-teaching-learning.

Munzenmaier begins the report with a reminder that Bloom didn’t originally set out to “invent educational dogma”; the Taxonomy “emerged from a series of informal discussions with colleagues that began at the American Psychological Association in 1948,” and eventually led to publication, in 1956, of the book that was “based on the work of hundreds of collaborators.” The cognitive hierarchy at the heart of the Taxonomy includes a set of stepping stones including the knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation levels; the result, Munzenmaier writes, was to help “make an important shift in educators’ focus: from teaching to learning”—a transition that is still very much underway as we continue moving from a teacher-centric model to a learner-centric model of learning at all stages of learners’ lives.

When she moves into the second half of the report with a section focusing on “Adapting the Hierarchy to the Digital Revolution,” we’re well into the work Andrew Churches has done “to ‘marry’ Bloom’s cognitive levels to 21^st-century digital skills.” Munzenmaier notes that the National Education Technology Standards (NETS)—creativity and innovation, communication and collaboration, research and information fluency, critical thinking/problem solving/decision making, digital citizenship, and technology operations and concepts—developed by the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) “define the foundations of digital literacy for K-12 education.” Since she is writing for adult trainer-teacher-learners involved in e-learning, she can’t help but plant a question in our minds: how many of us have mastered those same foundations that have been adopted for the younger students who are not all that far away from entering the workplaces where we are responsible for meeting learners’ lifelong learning needs? And if we have mastered those foundational elements expected of our youngest learners, how many of us have gone even further and mastered the NETS for teachers?

The eLearning Guild report serves not only as a wake-up call for many of us, but is wonderfully inspirational when it provides a copy of Churches’ concept map of Bloom’s Digital Taxonomy and a follow-up chart of activities for digital learning within each level of the digital taxonomy (remembering, understanding, applying, analyzing, evaluating, and creating). Suggestions range from summarizing the content of a learning experience in a blog post (an exercise many of us have enjoyed in the #etmooc massive open online course that is currently in progress) to developing scripts for videos, constructing an e-book, or developing a podcast. There is even a wonderful chart (pp. 29-30) offering criteria for selecting applications according to Bloom’s Taxonomy, with plenty of references to digital tools that can be used in this context (e.g., TED talks to help learners understand a topic if they are engaged in the growing movement toward a flipped classroom model; mind maps to help learners as they move through the “Analyze” level; and Prezi as a creation tool when learners move to the top of the learning hierarchy within the Taxonomy).

The most rewarding part of reading the report, however, is the reminder that trainer-teacher-learners still find the Taxonomy to be useful; that “Bloom’s work has also stood the test of time as a model for writing questions that require higher-order thinking”; and that “Bloom’s work continues to provoke thought, as he had hoped” it would.

And if you’re not completely satiated by the time you finish absorbing what Munzenmaier has provided, you’ll find plenty of links, at the end of the report, to online resources that will help you continue your exploration of the subject.

NMC Horizon Project Summit 2013 (Future of Education): Prelude

Given the magnificently overwhelming number of great learning opportunities available to trainer-teacher-learners, it’s difficult to choose one that stands out above all others. But the annual process of creating the New Media Consortium (NMC) Horizon Project Higher Education report has to be right up there for anyone interested in learning, technology, creativity, and possibilities.

It isn’t necessary to be a member of the report advisory board to gain much of what the process offers. Through the creative and trend-setting work of NMC staff in facilitating research via a publicly accessible wiki, the work of advisory board members is completely transparent and accessible to anyone who wants to follow the development of the report.

And it’s a process well worth following. It begins each fall with a posting, from NMC staff, of recent press clippings, videos, and other online resources to introduce some of the tech tools, trends, and challenges to be explored; the resources listed here could, by themselves, serve as a semester-long course surveying the state of technology in education and other creative endeavors. Sifting through even a relatively small number of those offerings in late 2012 provided introductions to a wonderful app called “Field Trip”; took me even further into the use of Google+ Hangouts for educational purposes than I had already gone; and led me to updates on the Google’s Project Glass initiative into augmented reality.

In spite of how much there is to absorb from that resource, it’s just a prelude to the heart of what the wiki and the Horizon Project overall provides. Jumping to the topics page leads to a list of more than 30 topics to be considered by advisory board members, and that, too, could provide the foundation for another semester-long course as visitors and advisory board members explore 3D printing, augmented reality, flipped classrooms, learning analytics, massively open online courses (MOOCs), tablet computing, telepresence, virtual assistants, wearable technology, and many other subjects that appear to be on the horizon for many of us.

Discussions among advisory board members about the tech topics are conducted within the wiki and can be read by anyone visiting the site—as are advisory board members’ discussions about key trends and critical challenges. The voting process to determine which tech tools, trends, and challenges are most likely to have the greatest impact within one-year, two- to three-year, and four- to five-year horizons produces a short list that is posted on the wiki and which remains the penultimate step before advisory board members engage in one final vote to determine what will be included in the new Higher Education report. While the final report that NMC staff writes is an invaluable resource to anyone involved in learning, that short list is also extremely important in that it calls attention to technology and trends that might otherwise be overlooked.

But even this is not enough to keep our NMC colleagues fully occupied, Celebrating ten years of Horizon Reports, staff organized an invitation-only retreat in Austin, Texas in January 2012 to reflect on what technology would mean to educational institutions in the next decade. The result , after more than two days of well-facilitated discussions among approximately 100 participants, was another learning resourced—a retreat wiki—and a communique that documented a set of megatrends.

So as I sit here in Austin the night before the second annual retreat/summit begins, I think about all that so many of us have gained from the work of the New Media Consortium—and wonder what is yet to come.