It's About Learning

The Future Is Now: 15 Innovations to Watch For – Commentary – The Chronicle of Higher Education via kwout

I have been monitoring innovation in education for the past 20 years so I am always looking for new insights so any post, article or story that points to “innovations to watch for” catches my attention. Even before I fully read the article I did a quick look up of the author Steven Mintz to see if he had the credentials or the experience to be offering these types of predictions. He does openly warn he readers he is a “historian and far better at interpreting the past than forecasting the future.” In addition to being a Professor of History, University of Texas at Austin, Mintz is also the Executive Director for the Institute for Transformational Learning in the University of Texas System. Finally, he points to over a decades worth of teaching with technology and walks the talk with a personal website http://stevenmintz.com/ that demonstrates his belief and skill in using technology to enhance learning.

Mintz points to following 15 innovations that he suggests will alter the face of higher education over the next 36 months:

1. e-Advising
2. Evidence-based pedagogy
3. The decline of the lone-eagle teaching approach
4. Optimized class time
5. Easier educational transitions
6. Fewer large lecture classes
7. New frontiers for e-learning
8. Personalized adaptive learning
9. Increased competency-based and prior-learning credits
10. Data-driven instruction
11. Aggressive pursuit of new revenue
12. Online and low-residency degrees at flagships
13. More certificates and badges
14. Free and open textbooks
15. Public-private partnerships

Despite not being an acclaimed expert in educational technology Mintz’s predictions fall in line with the literature and research in this area and more importantly he points to changes in learning as the key disruptive innovation in 8 of his 15 predictions. He sees evidence based pedagogy not only informing instructional design but also personalized adaptive learning. He accurately places the emphasis on student-centred, competency based, well designed and collaborative constructed learning experiences as a major catalyst for change. His remaining predictions point to the disruptors of open educational resources (OER), growth of online learning and the loosening of credentialing through certification and badges and the move toward public-private partnerships.

Mintz sums up his piece with a positive challenge to faculty members to work together and:

take the lead in designing an education that will truly serve the needs of our 21st-century students.

Read the full article…