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Horizon Report 2015

Horizon Report 2015 Cover

New Media Consortium (NMC) and EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative have held an ongoing series of conversations and dialogs with hundreds of technology professionals, campus technologists, faculty leaders from colleges and universities, and representatives of leading corporations. This process is formally called the Horizon Project, and the project’s Advisory Board considers the results of these dialogs and also looks at a wide range of articles, published and unpublished research, papers, and websites to generate a list of technologies, trends, challenges, and issues that knowledgeable people in technology industries, higher education, and museums are thinking about and compiles the resulting information into an annual Horizon Report.

The project uses qualitative research methods to identify the technologies selected for inclusion in each annual report, beginning with a survey of the work of other organizations and a review of the literature with an eye to spotting interesting emerging technologies. The Horizon Project expressly focuses on technologies not currently in widespread use in the Academy. In a typical year, 75 or more of these technologies may be identified for further investigation.

I have been reviewing the Horizon Reports since there were first published in 2002 and since 2006 have been following how mobile learning could be viewed as a disruptive innovation and a catalyst for change in higher education. By 2013 and 2014 mobile learning was only given a small mention and the reports focused more on what is possible with mobile learning than just the technology itself. By 2015 mobile learning is only mentioned in the context of BYOD and the emphasis is not on the technology itself but on the fact that we now have ubiquitous access to the worlds information in palm of our hand or in other mobile devices. There is no denying that mobile learning is now widely accepted and we are now exploring what we can do with the flexibility that mobility provides.

This shift away from the technology itself to a focus in innovation in learning is clearly revealed in the experts panels focus on:

advancing learning environments that are flexible and drive innovation.

The language of the following report headings confirms the focus of the 2015 report is clearly on learning innovation and learning environments:

  • blended learning
  • learning spaces
  • measuring learning
  • blending formal and informal learning
  • personalized learning
  • BYOD
  • flipped classroom
  • adaptive learning
  • rewards for teaching

This is a good thing! We are finally focusing on the fact that technology is just a tool that we use to enhance learning and that the best technology disappears and simple empowers us to do what we need to do.

The following infographic provides a summary of the six key trends, significant challenges and the important developments that make up the key sections of the report:
Horizon Report 2015 Infographic

The two short term trends of blended learning and redesigning learning spaces are examples of sustaining innovation and really point to the fact that higher education is simply keeping up with the times in these two areas. Innovative educators have been doing/using blended learning for over twenty years and many of these early adopters would simply state this the the most logical way to use technology to enhance learning and create significant learning environments (see the CSLE section of this site for more details). Similarly many early adopters have been using OER and have been measuring learning for a very long time. We are just able to do this in a more sophisticated manor because of ease of access and big data.

Perhaps one area that deserves special mention is advancing cultures of change and innovation. We (academics) are finally understanding that the technology is the easy part of innovation and the change process and it is the people or more specifically the culture that is the challenging part to move forward. This is clearly a long term problem or challenge and I suggest that it should be moved to the “Wicked Challenges” section along side rewards for teaching.

Horizon Report 2014

horizon2014-coverSince 2002, the

The Horizon Reports are a very good starting point for a discussion on mobile learning because they discuss emerging technology trends in direct relation to the needs of the learner. The following is a list in reverse chronological order of Horizon Reports summaries starting from the most recent, which was released in February of 2014, back to 2006. The first Horizon Report was released in 2004 but doesn’t have have any reference to mobile technologies, nor does the 2005 report, so neither are included in the summaries.

The key to viewing these summaries is to notice a significant pattern within the reports that points to mobile technologies as the foundation for most advances in the use of technology in education. For example, in the 2010 Horizon report all technologies to watch, except for the Visual Data Analysis, are somewhat or totally dependent on mobile learning. By 2013 and 2014 mobile learning is a given and the reports begin to focus more on what is possible with mobile learning than just the technology itself. Mobile technology is changing the way that we live and this is also changing the way that we learn. The following summary content was extracted from each respective year of the Horizon Report.

Notice the patterns and the significance of mobile technologies and learning in the following:

Important Developments in Educational Technology for Higher Education

Time-to-Adoption Horizon: One Year or Less

  • Flipped Classroom
  • Learning Analytics

Time-to-Adoption Horizon: Two to Three Years

  • 3D Printing
  • Games and Gamification

Time-to-Adoption Horizon: Four to Five Years

  • Quantified Self
  • Virtual Assistants

Key Trends Accelerating Higher Education Technology Adoption

The 2014 Horizon report deviated from the previous years by pulling out the key trends and putting them in a context of how they could potentially accelerate technology adoption. The time frame of fast, mid-range and long-range were added to provide an estimate on when these changes could be realized. This change in the report takes into account the reality that there are groups of technologies or interrelated technologies that play a role in the change. For example the integration of online, hybrid and collaborative learning will involve a wide assortment of technologies ranging from simple consumer based social networking tools to more sophisticated enterprise ready web and video conference tools all of which can be access via a mobile device.

Fast Trends: Driving changes in higher education over the next one to two years

  • Growing Ubiquity of Social Media
  • Integration of Online, Hybrid, and Collaborative Learning

Mid-Range Trends: Driving changes in higher education within three to five years

  • Rise of Data-Driven Learning and Assessment
  • Shift from Students as Consumers to Students as Creators

Long-Range Trends: Driving changes in higher education in five or more years

  • Agile Approaches to Change
  • Evolution of Online Learning

Significant Challenges Impeding Higher Education Technology Adoption

Another difference in the 2014 report from early reports is the inclusion of the Significant Challenges Impeding Higher Education Technology Adoption section. This section moves well beyond the immediate impact of technology and touches the societal and cultural challenges that higher education faces in moving into the 21st Century. A perpetual problem in this area is the Low Digital Fluency of Faculty. We know from the research and years of experience that this is NOT a technology issue–it is a people or a cultural problem. We also know that changing organizational culture is something that doesn’t happen from the outside but from the inside and that this type of change is very slow. While this is a solvable challenge one could argue that the time required for this to happen should move this challenge into the “Wicked Challenges” category.

Solvable Challenges: Those that we understand and know how to solve

  • Low Digital Fluency of Faculty
  • Relative Lack of Rewards for Teaching

Difficult Challenges: Those we understand but for which solutions are elusive

  • Competition from New Models of Education
  • Scaling Teaching Innovations

Wicked Challenges: Those that are complex to even define, much less address

  • Expanding Access
  • Keeping Education Relevant

Source: 2014 Horizon Report

Reflections from a Mobile Learning Perspective:
By 2014, the smartphone has reached a saturation level in North America and the practice of accessing information from ones mobile device is a given. The discussion of mobile learning in the report is minimal as is the notion of Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) but the report refers to many activities like the flipped classroom, the quantified self, virtual assistants, social media and the integration of all online, hybrid and collaborative learning which are dependent on the ubiquitous use of mobile devices. The 2014 report points to the fact that we are moving well beyond the simple notion of accessing information on mobile devices and moving from consumption to creation. The the mid range trend “Shift from Students as Consumers to Students as Creators” is just one example of how our mobile connected world is providing learners the opportunity to learn all the time and everywhere while they work on real world or authentic learning opportunities or as they create solutions to genuine problems.

Perhaps as higher education moves from the passive educational environment of main lecture points, rubrics, individual competition and standardized testing to an active educational environment of interactive learning, critical and analytical thinking, collaboration and meaningful projects we may then be able to address the “Wicked Challenge” of keeping education relevant.

Horizon Report 2013

HR13cover236x300Time-to-Adoption Horizon: One Year or Less

  • Flipped Classroom
  • Massively Open Online Courses
  • Mobile Apps
  • Tablet Computing

Time-to-Adoption Horizon: Two to Three Years

  • Augmented Reality
  • Game Based Learning
  • Internet of Things
  • Learning Analytics

Time-to-Adoption Horizon: Four to Five Years

  • 3D Printing
  • Flexible Displays
  • Next Generation Batteries
  • Wearable Technology

Key Trends

  • The abundance of resources and relationships made easily accessible via the Internet is increasingly challenging us to revisit our roles as educators.
  • Assessment and accreditation are changing to validate life-long learning.
  • Both formal and informal learning experiences are becoming increasingly important as college graduates continue to face a highly competitive workforce.
  • Education entrepreneurship is booming.
  • Education paradigms are shifting to include online learning, hybrid learning, and collaborative models.
  • Increasingly, students want to use their own technology for learning.
  • Massively open online courses are proliferating.
  • Open is a key trend in future education and publication, specifically in terms of open content, open educational resources, massively open online courses, and open access.
  • Social media is changing the way people interact, present ideas and information, and judge the quality of content and contributions.
  • There is an increasing interest in using data for personalizing the learning experience and for performance measures.

Significant Challenges

  • Appropriate metrics of evaluation lag the emergence of new scholarly forms of authoring, publishing, and researching.
  • Complexity is the new reality.
  • The demand for personalized learning is not adequately supported by current technology or practices.
  • Digital media literacy continues its rise in importance as a key skill in every discipline and profession.
  • Dividing learning into fixed units such as credit hours limits innovation across the board.
  • Economic pressures and new models of education are bringing unprecedented competition to the traditional models of tertiary education.
  • Institutional barriers present formidable challenges to moving forward in a constructive way with emerging technologies.
  • MOOCs have put a spotlight on residential campus education and its unique value; the challenge is to identify and articulate that value in the context of MOOCs and financial issues.
  • Massively open online courses are compelling, but universities must critically evaluate their use.
  • Most academics are not using new and compelling technologies for learning and teaching, nor for organizing their own research.

Reflections from a Mobile Learning Perspective:

Mobile learning is finally an accepted practice by 2013 and it is mentioned only in context of Mobile Apps and Tablet computing which are on the year or less adoptions timeframe. Perhaps the most significant perspective from this years report is that we are starting to see the beginning of the disruption of higher education by mobile and online technologies. The challenge of getting students information has not only been solved but the move to digital media in every industry other than education is putting huge pressure on institutions and academics to adopt. Similarly, Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have garnered national attention and are clearly putting pressure on higher education to consider signficant changes. Unfortunately most institutions are unable to move forward with effective ways to deal with new technologies. Perhaps the most damming indictment on higher education is that:

Most academics are not using new and compelling technologies for learning and teaching, nor for organizing their own research.

This would explain why education entrepreneurship is booming as organizations outside of academia are looking to satisfy the need that is currently not met. The only thing saving higher education from a full disruption that we have seen in music, newspaper, travel and other industries is that institutions still maintain control over the parchment. However, with the emergence of badges and other forms of recognition and the sobering fact that we have created a class of overeducated and underemployed generation perhaps this control may soon be disrupted as well.

Source:  2013 Horizon Report: Higher Ed Edition

Horizon Report 2012

Horizon Report 2012 Highlights

Time-to-Adoption Horizon: One Year or Less

  • Mobile Apps
  • Tablet Computing

Time-to-Adoption Horizon: Two to Three Years

  • Game-Based Learning
  • Learning Analytics

Time-to-Adoption Horizon: Four to Five Years

  • Gesture-Based Computing
  • Internet of Things

Key Trends

  • The abundance of resources and relationships made easily accessible via the Internet is increasingly challenging us to revisit our roles as educators.
  • Education paradigms are shifting to include online learning, hybrid learning and collaborative models.
  • People expect to be able to work, learn, and study whenever and wherever they want to.
  • The technologies we use are increasingly cloud-based, and our notions of IT support are decentralized.
  • There is a new emphasis in the classroom on more challenge-based and active learning.
  • The world of work is increasingly collaborative, driving changes in the way student projects are structured.

Significant Challenges

  • Appropriate metrics of evaluation lag the emergence of new scholarly forms of authoring, publishing, and researching.
  • Digital media literacy continues its rise in importance as a key skill in every discipline and profession.
  • Economic pressures and new models of education are bringing unprecedented competition to the traditional models of tertiary education.
  • Institutional barriers present formidable challenges to moving forward in a constructive way with emerging technologies.
  • New modes of scholarship are presenting significant challenges for libraries and university collections, how scholarship is documented, and the business models to support these activities.

Source: Horizon Report 2012

Horizon Report 2011Horizon Report 2011

Technologies to Watch:

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 Analytic

Key Trends:

  • The abundance of resources and relationships made easily accessible via the Internet is increasingly challenging us to revisit our roles as educators in sense-making, coaching, and credentialing.
  • People expect to be able to work, learn, and study whenever and wherever they want to.
  • The world of work is increasingly collaborative, giving rise to reflection about the way student projects are structured.
  • The technologies we use are increasingly cloud-based, and our notions of IT support are decentralized.

Critical Challenges:

  • Digital media literacy continues its rise in importance as a key skill in every discipline and profession.
  • Appropriate metrics of evaluation lag behind the emergence of new scholarly forms of authoring, publishing, and researching.
  • Economic pressures and new models of education are presenting unprecedented competition to traditional models of the university.
  • Keeping pace with the rapid proliferation of information, software tools, and devices is challenging for students and teachers alike.

Reflections from the Mobile Learning Perspective:

Mobility is a technology to watch in a year or less for the past three years. The reason we are still looking to mobility as a technology to watch over the next year, and that many of the key trends have not changed, is that unlike PC technology which has an eighteen to twenty-four month processor upgrade cycle and much slower upgrade cycle on the OS and related software, mobile devices are advancing much more rapidly. We have seen a new and significantly improved version of the iPhone each year since its release in 2007 and the release of the iPad in spring of 2010 changed everything (to quote Apple) and changed it again in the Spring of 2011 with the release of the iPad 2. When you factor in the equally explosive and rapid growth in Android phones and tablets the impact of mobility society is unlike anything else we have seen.

The publishers have also recognized that mobility and the cloud are making the deployment of ebooks a reality. Even though ebooks are still in their infancy and what we consider an ebook today will be a fraction of what will be available even two to three years down the road the impact of ebooks on education is starting to take effect. Partnerships between the major content management system (CMS) providers and publishers, the move of many academic journals to the electronic format, digitization of library resources,  and the digitization of millions of books by Google is bringing us to the point where digital learning is finally a reality.

Because People expect to be able to work, learn, and study whenever and wherever they want to we have become dependent upon cloud-based computing and our notions of IT support are decentralized. Our expectation for IT have shifted from anytime anywhere to all the time and everywhere. The demands of cloud and mobile based computing have put extreme pressures on traditional universities and only those institutions that are able to help their students, faculty and staff flourish in this new mobile computing environment will survive.

Source: Horizon Report 2011

Horizon Report 2010

Technologies to Watch:

Time-to-adoption: one Year or Less

  • Mobile Computing
  • Open Content

Time-to-adoption: Two to Three Years

  • Electronic Books
  • Simple Augmented Reality

Time-to-adoption: four to five Years

  • Gesture-Based Computing
  • Visual Data Analysis

Key Trends:

  • The abundance of resources and relationships made easily accessible via the Internet is increasingly challenging us to revisit our roles as educators in sense-making, coaching, and credentialing.
  • People expect to be able to work, learn, and study whenever and wherever they want to.
  • The technologies we use are increasingly cloud-based, and our notions of IT support are decentralized.
  • The work of students is increasingly seen as collaborative by nature, and there is more cross- campus collaboration between departments.

Critical Challenges:

  • The role of the academy — and the way we prepare students for their future lives – is changing.
  • New scholarly forms of authoring, publishing, and researching continue to emerge but appropriate metrics for evaluating them increasingly and far too often lag behind.
  • Digital media literacy continues its rise in importance as a key skill in every discipline and profession.
  • Institutions increasingly focus more narrowly on key goals, as a result of shrinking budgets in the present economic climate

Reflections from the Mobile Learning Perspective:

There is no denying that mobile computing is a technology to watch over the next year. Nor is there any doubt that electronic books will also be something to watch given the recent flurry of ereader releases over the past 6 months and most recently at the Consumer Electronics Show. We need to do more than just watch!. The Key Trends section of the report stresses the fact that people expect to work and learn wherever they are. Thanks to the Cloud and all that it offers we live in an “all the time everywhere” type of world but is academia doing enough to keep up with, or even address, these advances?

Mobile Phones were introduced as a technology to watch in two to three years back in the 2007 Horizon Report and again in the 2008 report but for the most part we are still at the early pilot stage in 2010 with these technologies. The examples of mobile technology implementation that we see in the 2010 report point to very small pockets of experimentation and other than ACU, very few institutions are experimenting with broad scaled adoption of mobile learning devices within their institutions. Given its nature, can academia hope to keep up with the rapid changes the move to mobile is pushing everyone to?–this is perhaps our biggest challenge.

Horizon Report 2009

Technologies to Watch:

Time-to-adoption: one Year or Less

  • Mobiles
  • Cloud Computing

Time-to-adoption: Two to Three Years

  • Geo-Everything
  • The Personal Web

Time-to-adoption: four to five Years

  • Semantic-Aware Applications
  • Smart Objects

Key Trends:

  • Increasing globalization continues to affect the way we work, collaborate, and communicate.
  • The notion of collective intelligence is redefining how we think about ambiguity and imprecision.
  • Experience with and affinity for games as learning tools is an increasingly universal characteristic among those entering higher education and the workforce.
  • Visualization tools are making information more meaningful and insights more intuitive.
  • As more than one billion phones are produced each year, mobile phones are benefiting from unprecedented innovation, driven by global competition.

Critical Challenges:

  • There is a growing need for formal instruction in key new skills, including information literacy, visual literacy, and technological literacy.
  • Students are different, but a lot of educational material is not.
  • Significant shifts are taking place in the ways scholarship and research are conducted, and there is a need for innovation and leadership at all levels of the academy.
  • We are expected, especially in public education, to measure and prove through formal assessment that our students are learning.
  • Higher education is facing a growing expectation to make use of and to deliver services, content, and media to mobile devices.

Reflections from the Mobile Learning Perspective:

Other than Smart Objects all the technologies to watch have mobility at their foundation. Perhaps the most significant aspect to the 2009 Horizon report is the the Critical Challenges section that clearly identifies Higher Education’s need to adapt. The statement “students are different, but a lot of education material is not” sums up our challenge. Academia is expected to deliver services to a mobile student population and prepare them for the challenges of the 21st Century but many of our teaching and research practices are mired in the 20th, and some would argue the 19th, century.

Our scholarship of teaching and learning, research and assessment practices must all adapt to these changes if we wish to keep up with the pressures of globalization and increased mobility of our learners and ultimately society.

Horizon Report 2008

Technologies to Watch:

Time-to-adoption: one Year or Less

  • Grassroots Video
  • Collaboration Web

Time-to-adoption: Two to Three Years

  • Mobile Broadband
  • Data Mashups

Time-to-adoption: four to five Years

  • Collective Intelligence
  • Social Operating Systems

Critical Challenges:

  • Significant shifts in scholarship, research, creative expression, and learning have created a need for innovation and leadership at all levels of the academy.
  • Higher education is facing a growing expectation to deliver services, content and media to mobile and personal devices.
  • The renewed emphasis on collaborative learning is pushing the educational community to develop new forms of interaction and assessment.
  • The academy is faced with a need to provide formal instruction in information, visual, and technological literacy as well as in how to create meaningful content with today’s tools.

Significant Trends:

  • The growing use of Web 2.0 and social net- working—combined with collective intelligence and mass amateurization—is gradually but inexorably changing the practice of scholarship.
  • The way we work, collaborate, and communicate is evolving as boundaries become more fluid and globalization increases.
  • Access to—and portability of—content is in- creasing as smaller, more powerful devices are introduced.
  • The gap between students’ perception of technology and that of faculty continues to widen.

Seven Megatrands identified in the past 5 years:

  • The evolving approaches to communication between humans and machines;
  • the collective sharing and generation of knowledge;
  • computing in three dimensions;
  • connecting people via the network;
  • games as pedagogical platforms;
  • the shifting of content production to users;
  • and the evolution of a ubiquitous platform.

Reflections from the Mobile Learning Perspective:

2008 was a pivotal year for the development of Mobile Learning and the Seven Megatrands identified in the previous 5 years of the Horizon reporting confirmed that society had started moving in a direction that would radically change all our lives. Like the earlier and past years mobile technologies of some sort were identified as needing to be watched but it was very clear by late 2007 and early 2008 that we were living in a mobile world. The evolution of a ubiquitous platform was a mobile platform because people started to connect and communicate with each other at work and at play in ways that we had never seen before. The explosive growth of Facebook, MySpace, YouTube and other social networking sites was happening because people could not connect to their networks all the time from anywhere.

The iPhone 3G was released in the summer of 2008 and ACU initiated its Connected project in the fall of 2008 and put an iPhone or iTouch into the hands of over 1000 freshman who entered the institution. When these freshmen received their devices there were less than 3000 apps in the app store but by the end of their first year (April 2009) there were over 35,000 apps. In hindsight (this is being written in January of 2010) the ACU gamble on the iPhone was accurate but to the leadership of ACU it wasn’t a gamble because all megatrands that the Horizon Reports as well as many other sources had been pointing to was the need to make this sort of move toward a broad scale adoption of mobile learning.

Horizon Report 2007

Time-to-adoption: one Year or Less

  • User-Created Content
  • Social Networking

Time-to-adoption: Two to Three Years

  • Mobile Phones
  • Virtual Worlds

Time-to-adoption: four to five Years

  • The New Scholarship and Emerging Forms of Publication
  • Massively Multiplayer Educational Gaming

Key Trends:

  • The environment of higher education is changing rapidly
  • Increasing globalization is changing the way we work, collaborate, and communicate.
  • Information literacy increasingly should not be considered a given.
  • Academic review and faculty rewards are increasingly out of sync with new forms of scholarship.
  • The notions of collective intelligence and mass amateurization are pushing the boundaries of scholarship.
  • Students’ views of what is and what is not tech- nology are increasingly different from those of faculty.

Critical Challenges:

  • Assessment of new forms of work continues to present a challenge to educators and peer reviewers.
  • There are significant shifts taking place in scholarship, research, creative expression, and learning, and a profound need for leadership at the highest levels of the academy that can see the opportunities in these shifts and carry them forward.
  • While progress is being made, issues of intellectual property and copyright continue to affect how scholarly work is done.
  • There is a skills gap between understanding how to use tools for media creation and how to create meaningful content.
  • The renewed emphasis on collaborative learning is pushing the educational community to develop new forms of interaction and assessment.
  • Higher education is facing a growing expectation to deliver services, content and media to mobile and personal devices.

Reflections from the Mobile Learning Perspective:

This is the second year that Mobile Phones were identified as a technology to watch and was also the year that social networking and user created content were identified as key indicators of change. This is also the year that the Horizon researchers started to explicitly challenge academia to keep up with these rapid changes. Key gaps were identified in the understanding of how to use tools for new media creation and more importantly how to use to those tools to make meaningful content. The Horizon group also started calling for leadership in the educational community to not only recognize these opportunities but challenged them to embrace these changes to move the academy forward.

Horizon Report 2006

Technologies to Watch:

Time-to-Adoption: One Year or Less

  • Social Computing
  • Personal Broadcasting

Time-to-Adoption: Two to Three Years

  • The Phones in Their Pockets
  • Educational Gaming

Time-to-Adoption: Four to Five Years

  • Augmented Reality and Enhanced Visualization
  • Context-Aware Environments and Devices

Key Trends:

  • Dynamic knowledge creation and social computing tools and processes are becoming more widespread and accepted.
  • Mobile and personal technology is increasingly being viewed as a delivery platform for services of all kinds.
  • Consumers are increasingly expecting individualized services, tools, and experiences, and open access to media, knowledge, information, and learning.
  • Collaboration is increasingly seen as critical across the range of educational activities, including intra- and inter-institutional activities of any size or scope.

Critical Challenges:

  • Peer review and other academic processes, such as promotion and tenure reviews, increasingly do not reflect the ways scholarship actually is conducted.
  • Information literacy should not be considered a given, even among “net-gen” students.
  • Intellectual property concerns and the management of digital rights and assets continue to loom as largely unaddressed issues.
  • The typical approach of experimentally deploying new technologies on campuses does not include processes to quickly scale them up to broad usage when they work, and often creates its own obstacles to full deployment.
  • The phenomenon of technological “churn” is bringing new kinds of support challenges.

Reflections from the Mobile Learning Perspective:

2006 was the first year the the Horizon Reports identified “Phones in their Pockets” as a technology to watch and placed it in the two-three time frame. The seeds for mobile computing were also be sown with technologies like social networking, personal broadcasting and off on the far horizon augmented reality environments and devices. A key trend of mobile and personal technology as a platform for the delivery of all kinds of services was also significant.

References:

2014 Horizon Report Johnson, L., Adams Becker, S., Estrada, V., and Freeman, A. 2013 Horizon Report. Austin, TX: The New Media Consortium, 2014.

2013 Horizon Report Johnson, L., Adams Becker, S., Cummins, M., Estrada, V., Freeman, A., and
Ludgate, H. 2013 Horizon Report. Austin, TX: The New Media Consortium, 2013.

2012 Horizon Report Johnson, L., Adams, S., and Cummins, M. 2012 Horizon Report. Austin, TX: The New Media Consortium, 2012.

2011 Horizon Report Johnson, L., Smith, R., Willis, H., Levine, A., and Haywood, K., 2011 Horizon Report. Austin, TX: The New Media Consortium, 2011.

2010 Horizon Report Johnson, Laurence F., Levine, Alan, Smith, Rachel S. and Stone, Sonja. 2010 Horizon Report. Austin, TX: The New Media Consortium, 2010.

2009 Horizon Report Johnson, Laurence F., Levine, Alan, and Smith, Rachel S. 2009 Horizon Report. Austin, TX: The New Media Consortium, 2009.

2008 Horizon Report Johnson, Laurence F., Levine, Alan, and Smith, Rachel S. 2008 Horizon Report. Austin, TX: The New Media Consortium, 2008.

2007 Horizon Report Johnson, Laurence F., Levine, Alan, and Smith, Rachel S. 2007 Horizon Report. Austin, TX: The New Media Consortium, 2007.

2006 Horizon Report Johnson, Laurence F. and Smith, Rachel S. 2006 Horizon Report. Austin, TX: The New Media Consortium, 2006.

Why Use an ePortfolio

Dwayne Harapnuik —  September 29, 2015

Go & Show Vs Sit & Get

If we simply build upon the minimalist definition of an ePortfolios as a learner’s digital evidence of meaningful connections, then the answer to why one would want to create an ePortfolios is to show those meaningful connections. This notion of showing what one has created, developed, built, written or assembled is an extremely important aspect of an effective learning environment that is often overlooked beyond the show & tell sessions that we fondly remember from primary school. Consider the experience of a foreign student from Bangledesh who shared:

If somebody asked me “What did you do in the laboratory? What did you learn in your education?
What did you do?” When I go back to my country, somebody can ask me “What did you do in the US?” This is the only thing I can show them, “This is what I have done. These are my grades, these are my projects, assignments…” They can see everything. It’s me. This is the best thing that I saw through the ePortfolio…(Provezis, 2012)

When we take a closer look at an ePortfolio where the learner can show what they have created, developed, built, written or assembled we see that the benefits include:

Active & deeper learning – The act of creation means that students are engaged in reflection and deeper learning. By reflecting on and showing what they have learned through their ePortfolio the learner is fully engaged and as John Dewey affirmed:

students thrive in an environment where they are allowed to experience and interact with the curriculum, and all students should have the opportunity to take part in their own learning. (1938)

The following links provide examples and support for active and deeper learning:

Choice, Ownership, Voice, and Authenticity (COVA)** – We can give students choice, ownership, and voice over their digital domain through a learning environments and pedagogy that provides authentic assignments that gives the student the opportunity to solve real world problems in their own institutions or organizations and show those solutions through their ePortfolio.

The following links provide examples and support for choice, ownership, voice and authenticity:

Visible learning – an ePortolio helps teachers see learning through the eyes of students and through effective feedback helps learners become their own teachers.

The following links provide examples and support for visible learning:

21st Century Assessment – Grades simply do not reveal skills, knowledge and abilities. Students need to be able to show potential schools or employers what they can do and an eportfolio is one of the tools that many organizations will be looking for to see this evidence of learning and abilities.

The Coalition for Access, Quality, and Success which includes all 8 Ivy League schools plus an additional 72 top-level schools are creating an admission process and platform tools that will include an online virtual locker (an ePortfolios), a collaboration platform, and an application portal—seek to recast the process of applying to college as the culmination of students’ development over the course of their high school careers.

The following links provide additional examples and support for 21st Century Assessment:

References:

Dewey, John (1938). Experience & Education. New York, NY

Provezis, S. (2012). Weaving assessment into the institutional fabric (NILOA Examples of Good Assessment Practice). LaGuardia Community College: Urbana, IL: University of Illinois and Indiana University. Retrieved from http://www.learningoutcomeassessment.org/documents/LaGuardiaCC.pdf

**COVA – The abbreviation COVA was first used by Dr. Tilisa Thibodeaux at Lamar University in 2015 in our discussions regarding ePortfolios persistence and our collaborative research into why students tend to stop using ePortfolios after their program of study. COVA originally referred to choice, ownership, voice, and agency but after subsequent discussion agency was replaced by authentic learning opportunities because of the primary role authentic assignments play in the continued use of ePortfolios.

Additional Resources:

41 Benefits of an ePortfolio – Wonderful expanded list of how ePortfolios benefit learners

ePortfolio
Why: Learning to learn
What: Doing the learning
How: Showing the learning
Who: Owning the learning
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Revised Sept 2023

In a TED talk and more recently in his blog post Connecting dots (or collecting dots) Seth Godin argues:

Without a doubt, the ability to connect the dots is rare, prized and valuable. Connecting dots, solving the problem that hasn’t been solved before, seeing the pattern before it is made obvious, is more essential than ever before.

Godin also asks why then do we spend so much time collecting dots. We overwhelm our learners with so much data, ask them to regurgitate this content in tests, and simply focus on the delivery of content instead of helping our learners make meaningful connections. While Godin has coined the notion of connecting the dots rather than collecting the dots, the idea of developing connections within a conceptual framework was first intro ducted to me by my colleague Robert McKelvain, Ph.D. at Abilene Christian University in 2010. McKelvain suggested that the difference between an expert and a novice is that an expert has a fully developed conceptional framework.
Expert Conceptual Framework
In the diagram, the main concepts are represented by the larger blue dots and the dotted lines between the concepts represent the connections that the expert has developed as they have expanded their conceptual framework. The expert not only relies upon their full conceptual framework, they are able to enter into this framework from many different perspectives. They can see all the pieces and understand all the connections and when dealing with new information they have a much broader base in which to understand and encode that new information—which makes them a more adaptable, efficient, and effective learner and problem solver in their areas of expertise.
Novice Conceptual Framework
In contrast to the expert, the novice may not only have a minimally developed conceptional framework, they may even have some of the concepts wrong, miss the connections, and not fully understand all the connections that they do see. If we understand that learning is the making of meaningful connections then the role of the expert teacher is to:

  • Provide the context for learning which includes introducing the fundamental conceptual framework components.
  • Create the environment where the learner can start to make meaningful connections between those concepts.
  • Model the learning process needed to: make those connections, add new concepts, and see the patterns that lead to solving problems.
  • Mentor the novice in building and expanding their conceptual framework.

In a nutshell, the expert models what it takes to become an expert learner and take ownership in the development of one’s own expertise.

One of the biggest challenges in this process is the expert’s bias, which is the inability for an expert to see the challenges that a novice or beginner faces. This can have significant ramifications in areas where subject matter experts with limited teaching knowledge and experience are tasked with teaching. Subject matter experts have often forgotten more than a novice even knows and unless they are also expert teachers and have developed the conceptual framework of an expert teacher, they can have difficulty understanding the challenges that the novice is experiencing. Therefore, teacher training and professional development will be crucial if we hope to move from the notion of collecting dots to connecting dots.

blue-dot-web

The difference between an expert and a novice is that an expert has a fully developed conceptional framework and a novice not only has a minimally developed conceptional framework they may even have some of the concepts wrong and not fully understand all the connections. If we understand that learning is the making of meaningful connections then role of the expert teacher is to provide the context for learning which means they may provide the broad conceptual framework and also create the environment where the learner can start to make the meaningful connections between those concepts. Ultimately the expert mentors the novice in building their conceptual frame work. If you consider the above graphic this notion can be simplified as the process of connecting the dots.

For the past several weeks I have been considering and exploring the best way to convey this idea so when I read Seth Godin’s post Connecting dots (or collecting dots) this morning I was immediately struck by the elegance and the simplicity of his argument. I copied and shared the entire post because it deserves repeating:

Without a doubt, the ability to connect the dots is rare, prized and valuable. Connecting dots, solving the problem that hasn’t been solved before, seeing the pattern before it is made obvious, is more essential than ever before.

Why then, do we spend so much time collecting dots instead? More facts, more tests, more need for data, even when we have no clue (and no practice) in doing anything with it.

Their big bag of dots isn’t worth nearly as much as your handful of insight, is it?

The teachers role is then to help the learner to connect the dots not to simply collect the dots. Enough said!

standardized test

(Credit: Constantine Pankin via Shutterstock)

I clipped the blog post by Brandon Busteed, Executive Director of Gallup Education The School Cliff: Student Engagement Drops With Each School Year earlier this year and added it to my Evernote “.Write” repository hoping to one day deal with this topic in a significant way. When I read the story I immediately agreed with Busteed’s assertion that a overzealous focus on standardized testing and the lack of experiential and project-based learning as probable causes of this drop in student engagement. But it wasn’t until this fall that I experienced, in a very personal way, how standardized testing and the supporting curriculum negatively impacted my older son’s engagement and attitude toward school. As the following data indicates this breakdown in engagement is rampant.

engagement drop
Source: Gallap.com

The Gallup Student Poll which surveyed nearly 500,000 students in grades five through 12 from more than 1,700 public schools in 37 states in 2012 revealed the sobering fact that the longer students stay in school, the less engaged they become. The survey asked students to indicate their level of agreement with statements such as: “My teachers make me feel my schoolwork is important,” and “At this school, I have the opportunity to do what I do best every day.”

From my anecdotal experience with my son Levi I would also have to add that standardized tests add a level of frustration and futility to the learning experience. We moved to North Vancouver to enable our boys to pursue their goals of professional downhill mountain bike racing. To ensure that they boys can commit enough time to riding and training and to allow for the flexibility the sport demands both of our boys are being home educated. They are engaged in math and science courses online and since the boy’s mother and I have a background in the humanities we are working with the boys on English, Social and History and are preparing the boys to challenge the Alberta Education departmental exams.

The Social 30 curriculum focus is on understanding the role that ideologies play in shaping identity. When I reviewed the text and supporting material I was excited to be able to explore some very significant life questions and issues with my son. I saw our working through this course as a way to further explore my son’s emerging identity and challenge him to think much deeper and more critically in his daily life. We have read through the first 5 chapters of the material, watched many videos and documentaries, worked through many review questions, discussed many of the historical issues that have emerged from the ideologies of individualism and collectivism and are starting to explore the impact of these fundamental perspectives on our modern society. Everything was going well and it was clear that Levi was not just understanding the material he was able to apply what he learned to an analysis of the world around him.

Since we are going to be challenging the course and Levi’s entire grade will be dependent upon this one exam we started working through some of the practice and sample exams from the previous years and soon realized that all the work on higher order thinking skills of analysis, application, synthesis were for naught because the exams were structured for recognition and regurgitation. Most of the multiple choice questions had at least 3 seemingly correct answers and the right answer was the one that repeated a phrase directly from the text. Even the supposed analysis questions required responses that were worded as close to the text as possible.

All our work at understanding and application didn’t prepare either Levi or I to do well on these exams–I worked through the exams as well and did only slightly better than Levi. We quickly realized that the best way to do well on the exams was to repeatedly go through the practice exams to get used to the way that the questions were structured and to be able to recognize the rightest answers. The exams were testing for information recognition and NOT understanding. I fully understand why teachers have to teach toward the test. Standardized testing forces this unfortunate practice.

Levi and I are still working toward understand but we have now added another component to our studies–test writing practice. Unfortunately that takes almost as much time as learning for understanding so our time on this subject has nearly doubled. For boys who are very serious about their commitment to being extreme athletes time is something that is very valuable and it is so frustrating that we have to WASTE so much of it on preparing for this exam.

My attitude toward teachers who teach to the test has completely changed. I regrettably understand why they have to do this–because I am having to do this. Last year in parent teacher interviews two of Levi’s teachers openly stated that in order to prepare Levi and his peers for the departmental exams and for university they had to teach to the test. The small charter school that Levi attending last year in Alberta boasted some of the highest high school achievement standards in the province and I now better understand how they got this ranking and what they had to do to get it. This is a systemic problem. A problem that we all know could easily be fixed if we moved away from an environment based on standardized testing to an active educational environment of active learning, critical and analytical thinking, collaboration and meaningful projects.

But teachers can’t make that move until the politicians and the ministries of education have the courage to move away from a culture of assessment to a culture of learning–this foolish notion that you can “fatten a pig by continuously weighing it”. Unfortunately, Alberta is moving toward more standardize testing in K-12 so these problems will persist.

I don’t see any significant and immeidate changes on the horizon that will improve the circumstances for my two boys but the results of the Equinox Summit – Learning 2030 indicate that learning in the future will be significantly different. Earlier this year the Waterloo Global Science Initiative hosted the Equinox Summit – Learning 2030 that was directed by Graham Brown-Martin, the founder of Learning Without Frontiers (LWF) a disruptive think tank focused on new ideas for learning and teaching practice, brought together 40 education thought leaders that worked together propose flexible, context and culturally sensitive solutions that would act as a foundation to define the global education systems in 2030. The group developed a Communique that proposes a radically different structure for learning in 2030, one in which traditional concepts of classes, courses, timetables, and grades are replaced by more flexible, creative
and student-directed forms of learning. As one can see from the points below the Summit proposed a system that emphasizes assessment that is nothing like the standardized testing that we are so stymied by today:

  1. Learning focuses on the development of lifelong learning practices and a sense of self, rather than facts and figures.
  2. Students learn through cross-disciplinary and often collaborative projects.
  3. Students connect with each other in fluid groupings that are dictated by their needs at any given moment.
  4. Teachers and other learning professionals serve as guides or curators of learning.
  5. Learning progress is measured through qualitative assessment of a student’s skills and competencies that document the learner’s entire experience, rather than measuring a discrete outcome.
  6. Decisions that affect the learning environment are made by stakeholder groups comprised of earners, teachers, governments, and parents, with learners and teachers playing a central role in decision-making.
  7. Schools empower both students and teachers, encouraging them to experiment with new ideas and fail safely, so that they develop the confidence to take risks.

I am hoping that these fundamentals are realized much sooner than 2030, because we need this type of a learning system TODAY. I am also hoping that there is the political will and academic leadership that will help bring this system about. In the mean time it is the responsibility of all educators to envision this type of a system for the future to work toward making it a reality today.

View the full Communique