Pass the SoLT

The New Zealand edition of the 2011 Horizon Report was released today. The Report lists the 12 “technologies to watch” which are claimed to uniquely reflect the state of tertiary education in New Zealand. This is the first time that a New Zealand specific report has been released and the findings make interesting reading in comparison to reports from other regions. The table below provides a comparison of the "short list" between New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the Global Edition.

The differences between the rankings could reflect regional priorities and the relative evolution and maturity of new developments in different parts of the world. However, we should not rule out questions about the validity of the contrasting selections as they come from experts in the field who should have a local and global outlook.

I have to say the absence of learning analytics is a major omission in the New Zealand report as this area of technological innovation is one of the really 'hot' topics internationally and it has been described as the "next big thing". The second Learning Analytics and Knowledge conference is in Vancouver in May 2012. Arguably, learning analytics has already arrived and I would certainly place the development in the two to three year category.

But then I can hardly complain as I was left off the initial selection process by accident and pressures of work and travel commitment prevented me from participating in the identification and voting process. It is also surprising to see Open Content (i.e. Open Educational Resources) and Digital Scholarship missing from the New Zealand list as I believe these two developments are already reshaping the nature of academic work and the way institutions design and deliver courses.

In terms of scholarship, I encourage you to read Martin Weller's recent book on how technology is reshaping scholarly practice.

Although it seems everyone agrees 'The abundance of resources and relationships made easily accessible via the Internet is increasingly challenging us to revisit our roles as educators', I'm less convinced about the New Zealand panel conclusion that, 'The growing availability of bandwidth will dramatically change user behaviours in teaching, learning and research over the next five years'. This claim seems to be very technology-led and overly focused on the supply-side of internet provision. We know from the experience in other countries that more attention is required on the demand-side, especially in tertiary education, as it's naive to think that if we built it, they'll come.

Once again this year I'm a little critical of the failure to acknowledge that new technology is not neutral and more attention could be given in future years to the way technology will impact our lives--for better and worse. Digital exclusion would appear on my list of the major challenges facing tertiary education and New Zealand society at large. We need to be wary of the inherent technological determinism promoted by the annual Horizon Report exercise. But the New Zealand edition of the Report will no doubt generate further discussion and for this reason it serves a useful purpose.

However, it does make me wonder whether we need to start a regular horizon report for predicting the type of new pedagogies that we should expect to see in our tertiary institutions over the next one to five years. Of course the list of pedagogies could be quite short and may not change from one year to the next.

And in terms of pedagogy I'm reminded of the finding in the recent "Going the Distance Report" that less than one-third of chief academic officers believe that their faculty accept the value and legitimacy of online education. This percent has changed little over the last eight years.

The full report is available from the New Media Consortium website.

Here's a link to another pro learning futures video which cites some of the popular usage stats around the uptake of social media and new digital technology. I'm still thinking about the statement that 'when you lose your mobile, you lose part of your brain'.

In many respects, the unsubstantiated claims about the benefits of the technology revolution in education reinforce Neil Selwyn's recent editorial in the British Journal of Educational Technology which writes in praise of pessimism and the need for negativity in educational technology. He begins the Editorial by stating:

"Educational technology is an essentially ‘positive project.’ Most people working in this area are driven by an underlying belief that digital technologies are—in some way—capable of improving education" (p.713).

Neil then goes on to say...

"I would like to argue that this inherent positivity has become an all-encompassing—if not hegemonic—feature of educational technology scholarship. Indeed, I would contend that it limits the validity and credibility of the field as a site of serious academic endeavour" (p.713)

I have followed Neil's work for almost a decade and he continues to stand out as one of the leading scholars in the field who brings some balance to the techno-hype that runs throughout the learning futures discourse. As Selwyn reminds us not every new technology is progress:

"Given all that we know about the social complexities of technology use in education, I would like to argue that a pessimistic stance is the most sensible, and possibly the most productive, perspective to take. As such, I am advancing an approach that simply accepts education, technology and society as it is—for better and (more often) for worse" (p.714).

I encourage you to read the full Editorial to see how Selwyn invites the educational technology community to pursue 'pessimism with a purpose'. It's a very good read.

This news of the latest evolution in the ebook market comes from a colleague. It appears the first colour E-Ink device is now available and in use in Russia. The JetBook Color EDU.12 has been in development since earlier this year and will be made available shortly in the United States. The interesting aspect of this development is that the device is specifically targeting the educational etextbook market along with being a dedicated teacher's console with lesson plans, storage for student grades, pre-set exams, etc. Further information is available from the Jetbook website. Here is a link to a brief video clip but most readers will have to rely on the images as the narrative is in Russian...

http://youtu.be/D4pgDoGLiIg

This is just a quick placeholder to alert readers to this interview arranged by Capella University with Professor Tony Bates and Dr Michael Simonson on the history of distance education. The predictions for the future at the end of the interview are particularly interesting and I'm still reflecting on the half-full and half-empty scenarios described by the interviewees. Another valuable aspect of the interview is the way in which Adobe Presenter is used in a far more engaging way than merely dumping content at the audience. Futher comments about the interview are available on Tony's website which I regularly keep up to date with.

enjoy!

Two quick items on the theme of ebooks and digitalization. The first is a review essay published in First Monday that examines literature from a variety of disciplines on the technological, social, behavioural, and neuroscientific impacts that the Internet is having on the practice of reading. A particular focus is given to the reading behaviour of emerging university students and their preferences for print and digital texts. Cull (2011) writes:

"While university students operate in a world immersed in digital text, they have not simultaneously abandoned print. It is not true, as Steve Jobs stated and as Nicholas Carr implied, that they like the iPad because they don’t read. In fact, for their university studies, students prefer to read on paper, although they also want the convenience of online digital text."

This conclusion is similar to the results of a Massey University survey conducted in 2010 which explored students' study practices and preferences for printed and digital learning resources. We found students wanted digital learning resources and expected them to become normal practice in the future but by and large they also wanted to retain at least some printed study materials.

The second item is a short video which presents a vision of how the concept of the book is likely to evolve in the future. It shows how the book will become more personalized to meet the needs of an increasing connected reader. The vision is based around three concepts--Nelson, Copeland and Alice--and the first has particular significance for the design and type of engagement with study materials in higher education. The idea of co-development and non-linear narrative in Alice is also an example of how digital books have the potential to redefine the nature of the reading experience.