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2014 Horizon Report finds six key trends in E-Learning

By Clive Young, on 7 February 2014

Every year the NMC Horizon Report examines emerging technologies for their potential impact on and use in teaching, learning, and ‘creative inquiry’ within the environment of higher education. The report, downloadable in PDF, is compiled by an international body of experts and provides a useful checklist trends, challenges and technologies in the field.

The key trends identified in the in the short term are

  • Growing ubiquity of social media
  • Integration of online, hybrid, and collaborative learning

Longer term trends are: data-driven learning and assessment, shift from students as consumers to students as creators , agile approaches to change and the evolution of online learning

Key short-term challenges are

  • Low digital fluency of faculty
  • Relative lack of rewards for teaching

More difficult challenges are; competition from new models of education, scaling teaching innovations, expanding access and keeping education relevant.

The important developments in educational technology they identify are in the short term are

  • Flipped classroom
  • Learning analytics

Longer-term innovations are; 3D printing, games and gamification, ‘quantified self’ and virtual assistants.

There are useful commenatries and links thoughout. Encouraging that many of these ideas are already being implemented, trialed and discussed here at UCL.

5 Responses to “2014 Horizon Report finds six key trends in E-Learning”

  • 1
    whyndham_UCL wrote on 7 February 2014:

    2014 Horizon Report finds six key trends in E-Learning http://t.co/z8TgJjUnzj

  • 2
    Matt Jenner wrote on 7 February 2014:

    Each report adds a couple of areas, usually, since inception in 2004. I see that user created content and social networking/media have both been cited in 2007 as short/medium term, perhaps they rebounded from the plateau of productivity back to the trough of disillusionment? I am unsure. Learning Analytics is forever bobbing forward, I hope one day it will disappear from their list, as I take that to usually mean it’s arrived…

    Most interesting is the idea of the new forms to online learning and the concept of agility. I’ve yet to sit down and read the whole report, but it brings up an interesting question: if the traditional universities suffer from lack of agility to change, will they be overtaken by those who succeed to embrace it? MIT embraced something and now they are QS #1 ranking university in the world. That’s got to make an impact in our decision making.

  • 3
    jgramp wrote on 11 February 2014:

    #elearningucl RT @UCL_ELE: 2014 Horizon Report finds six key trends in E-Learning http://t.co/C0Rd3sLei7

  • 4
    Hype vs hope in e-learning | UCL E-Learning Environments team blog wrote on 5 September 2014:

    […] series of systematic ‘serious experiments’ in key areas (e.g as derived for example from the Horizon reports) which not just for local use but always with a view from the beginning of how to scale to […]

  • 5
    2015 Horizon Report – what are the six key trends in E-Learning? | UCL E-Learning Environments team blog wrote on 17 February 2015:

    […] Flipped classroom – same as last year […]

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