2015 NMC Technology Outlook for Australian Tertiary Education A Horizon Project Regional Report Executive Summary ................................................................................................................................................................................... 1 Introduction ......................................................................................................................................................................................................... 2 Key Trends Accelerating Technology Adoption .................................................................................................. 5 Significant Challenges Impeding Technology Adoption ........................................................................ 7 Important Developments in Educational Technology: Time-to-Adoption Horizon: One Year or Less § Bring Your Own Device .................................................................................................................................... 9 § Cloud Computing ........................................................................................................................................... 10 § Flipped Classroom ........................................................................................................................................... 11 § Learning Analytics ........................................................................................................................................... 12 Time-to-Adoption Horizon: Two to Three Years § Badges/Microcredit ......................................................................................................................................... 13 § Mobile Learning ................................................................................................................................................ 14 § Open Licensing ................................................................................................................................................. 15 § Wearable Technology .................................................................................................................................... 16 Time-to-Adoption Horizon: Four to Five Years § Adaptive Learning Technologies ............................................................................................................ 17 § Augmented Reality ........................................................................................................................................ 18 § Quantified Self .................................................................................................................................................. 19 § Telepresence ........................................................................................................................................ 20 Methodology .................................................................................................................................................................................................... 21 2 015 Horizon Project Australia Expert Panel ...................................................................................................... 23 2015 NMC Technology Outlook for Australian Tertiary Education A Horizon Project Regional Report is a collaboration between The New Media Consortium and Open Universities Australia © 2015, The New Media Consortium. Creative Commons License Permission is granted under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License to replicate, copy, distribute, transmit, or adapt this report freely provided that attribution is provided as illustrated in the citation below. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. Citation Johnson, L., Adams Becker, S., and Hall, C. (2015). 2015 NMC Technology Outlook for Australian Tertiary Education: A Horizon Project Regional Report. Austin, Texas: The New Media Consortium. Cover image courtesy of Open Universities Australia ISBN 978-0-9861301-5-1 Executive Summary     Executive Summary The 2015 NMC Technology Outlook for Australian Tertiary Education: A Horizon Project Regional Report reflects a collaborative research effort between the New Media Consortium (NMC) and Open Universities Australia to inform Australian campus leaders and decision-makers about important developments in technologies supporting teaching, learning, and creative inquiry in tertiary education across the continent. All of the research underpinning the report makes use of the NMC’s Delphi-based process for bringing groups of experts to a consensus viewpoint, in this case around the impact of emerging technologies on teaching, learning, or creative inquiry in Australian tertiary education over the next five years. The same process underlies the well-known NMC Horizon Report series, which is the most visible product of an on-going research effort begun more than 13 years ago to systematically identify and describe emerging technologies likely to have a large impact on education around the globe. The 2015 NMC Technology Outlook for Australian Tertiary Education was produced to explore important developments in technology and forecast their potential impact expressly in an Australian context. In the effort that took place from January through March 2015, a carefully selected panel of experts was asked to consider hundreds of relevant articles, news, blog posts, research, and project examples as part of the preparation that ultimately pinpointed the most notable technology topics, trends, and challenges for Australian tertiary education over the next five years. Known as the 2015 Horizon Project Australia Expert Panel, that group of thought leaders consists of knowledgeable individuals, all highly regarded in their fields. Collectively the panel represents a range of diverse perspectives across the tertiary education sector. The project has been conducted under an open data philosophy, and all the interim projects, secondary research, discussions, and ranking instrumentation can be viewed at aus.wiki.nmc.org. The precise research methodology employed in producing the report is detailed in a special section found at the end of this report. The expert panel identified the top ten key trends, the top ten significant challenges, and twelve important developments in educational technology. Each of the twelve developments in educational technology are profiled, on a single page that describes and defines the technology, and are ranked as very important for Australian tertiary education over the next year, two to three years, and four to five years. Every page opens with a carefully crafted definition of the highlighted technology, outlines its educational relevance, points to several real-life examples of its current use, and ends with a short list of additional readings for those who wish to learn more. Preceding those discussions are sections that detail the expert panel’s top ranked trends and challenges, and illuminate why they are seen as highly influential factors in the adoption of technology in Australian universities over the next five years. The three key sections of this report constitute a reference and straightforward technology- planning guide for educators, campus leaders, administrators, policy-makers, and technologists. It is our hope that this research will help to inform the choices that institutions are making about technology to improve, support, or extend teaching, learning, and creative inquiry in Australian tertiary education. Educators and administrators worldwide look to the NMC Horizon Project and both its global and regional reports as key strategic technology planning references, and it is for that purpose that the 2015 NMC Technology Outlook for Australian Tertiary Education is presented.   © 2015, NMC An NMC Horizon Project Regional Report Page 1 Introduction     Introduction The NMC Horizon Project and the 2015 Horizon Project Australia Expert Panel recognise that technology adoption in tertiary education is accelerated by trends in policy, leadership, and practice. Therefore, key trends frame the discussion of technology use in Australian universities. Similarly, a number of challenges are impeding the proliferation of digital tools, and the panel has identified a set of significant challenges that distinctly reflects the current obstacles facing Australian tertiary education over the coming five years. The top three trends and challenges from those longer lists are included in the related tables in this summary, and are organised by categories described in the next sections of this report. As Table 1 below illustrates, the choices of the Australian experts overlap in interesting ways with those who contributed to the NMC Horizon Report > 2015 Higher Education Edition, which looked at technology uptake from a global perspective, and the 2014 NMC Technology Outlook > Australian Tertiary Education, which provides perspective from last year’s Australian expert panel — altogether a group of 143 acknowledged experts. Table 1: Top-Ranked Trends Across Three NMC Horizon Research Projects NMC Horizon Report 2015 Technology Outlook 2014 Technology Outlook 2015 Higher Education Edition Australian Tertiary Education Australian Tertiary Education Rethinking Learning Spaces Increasing Use of Hybrid/Blended Rise of Data-Driven Learning and Learning Assessment Increasing Use of Redesigning Learning Spaces Increasing Preference for Hybrid/Blended Learning Personal Technology Growing Focus on Measuring Growing Focus on Measuring Evolution of Online Learning Learning Learning The 2015 Australian panel’s highest ranked trends overlap with the global panel’s selections in two areas — redesigning learning spaces and increasing use of hybrid and blended learning. All over Australia, institutions such as the University of South Australia are designing learning environments that better accommodate more progressive pedagogies. Student-centred, active approaches call for more flexible classroom settings. Both panels are also observing the rise of online learning used in tandem with face-to-face experiences. Lecture capture is enabling students to get instruction at home via video, which allows time for hands-on projects and substantive discussions during class. All three panels agree that there is a growing emphasis on measuring learning through methods involving digital assessment and learning analytics. In order to revise teaching approaches to more effectively meet student needs, often in real time, instructors need evidence and specific data about how well their students are grasping the material. This trend is further validated by the presence of adaptive learning technologies on the list of important developments in technology deemed influential by the expert panel. Horizon Project panels in general have agreed that trends like these are clear drivers of technology adoption; the 2015 Australian panel especially saw such a linkage. At the same time, these panels of experts also agree that technology adoption is often hindered by both local and systemic challenges, which are grounded in everyday realities that make it difficult to learn about, much less adopt, new tools and approaches.   © 2015, NMC An NMC Horizon Project Regional Report Page 2 Introduction     Table 2: Top-Ranked Challenges Across Three NMC Horizon Research Projects NMC Horizon Report 2015 Technology Outlook 2014 Technology Outlook 2015 Higher Education Edition Australian Tertiary Education Australian Tertiary Education Integrating Technology in Personalising Learning Integrating Technology in Teacher Education Teacher Education Improving Digital Literacy Rethinking the Roles of Educators Blending Formal and Informal Learning Creating Authentic Learning Creating Authentic Learning Scaling Teaching Innovations Opportunities Opportunities As noted in Table 2, above, both the 2015 Australian and global panels agreed that creating authentic learning opportunities is a pressing challenge, and will rely on the integration of more hands-on and immersive learning in university courses. In order for students to be more prepared for the workforce, simulations and projects that encourage entrepreneurial thinking are needed in tertiary education curriculum. The 2015 Australian experts ranked personalising learning and rethinking the roles of educator as the top two challenges impeding technology uptake — regarded by the other two panels but deemed less significant. Pursuing personalised learning in Australia means promoting more student-led approaches where learners choose their pathways in the ways in which they demonstrate their skill and knowledge acquisition. The shift to the digital arena for universities also means that students are relying more on virtual environments and Internet resources for learning. Adaptive learning technologies, identified as an important development in technology by the panel, are being piloted to help guide students online and present to them relevant and tailored content. Resetting expectations for the roles of professors and other faculty is also chief among the concerns of the 2015 Australian panel. Integrating more personalised learning opportunities and student-led approaches challenge traditional perceptions of teachers. There is a need for educators to promote effective technology use as a way to help students independently pursue their ideas and develop projects and media. The goal is for professors and instructors to act as coaches and mentors, rather than lecturers. Fuelled by the key trends and impeded by significant challenges selected by the panel, the 12 “technologies to watch” presented in the body of this report reflect our experts’ opinions as to which of the nearly 60 technologies considered will be most important to Australian tertiary education over the five years following the publication of the report. All three of these projects’ expert panels strongly agree that the Bring Your Own Device movement, along with the flipped classroom, will likely tip into mainstream use within the next year — developments in technology that span education across the world. There are also several other overlaps, indicating Australia’s close alignment with prevalent global trends. The three panels believe that mobile learning, in some form, will soon be in widespread practice, as Australian educators are increasingly encouraging students to use their own devices for learning or making sure educational resources are formatted for mobile consumption. All of the panels were in consensus that learning analytics is poised for mainstream adoption — coinciding with the trend toward measuring learning. However, compared to the 2014 Australian expert panel, the 2015 panel believes that learning analytics has gained traction in being   © 2015, NMC An NMC Horizon Project Regional Report Page 3 Introduction     leveraged in practice at more local universities. Both 2015 panels also agree that adaptive learning technologies are on the far-term horizon, demonstrating a growing interest in tailoring online content to suit individual student needs. Table 3: Comparison of “Final 12” Topics Across Three NMC Horizon Research Projects NMC Horizon Report 2015 Technology Outlook 2014 Technology Outlook 2015 Higher Education Edition Australian Tertiary Education Australian Tertiary Education Time-to-Adoption Horizon: One Year or Less Bring Your Own Device Bring Your Own Device Bring Your Own Device Flipped Classroom Cloud Computing Flipped Classroom Learning Analytics Flipped Classroom Mobile Learning Mobile Apps Learning Analytics Online Learning Time-to-Adoption Horizon: Two to Three Years Collaborative Environments Badges/Microcredit Badges/Microcredit Games and Gamification Mobile Learning Games and Gamification Makerspaces Open Licensing Learning Analytics Wearable Technology Wearable Technology Open Content Time-to-Adoption Horizon: Four to Five Years Adaptive Learning Technologies Adaptive Learning Technologies The Internet of Things Flexible Displays Augmented Reality Machine Learning The Internet of Things Quantified Self Natural User Interfaces Wireless Power Telepresence Wearable Technology Both the 2014 and 2015 Australian panels deemed badges and microcredit as positioned in the mid-term horizon, indicating that the area is not rapidly advancing but moving at a steady, more incremental pace. Both Australian National University and Curtin University currently use badges to incentivise students in online learning platforms for informal training sessions. The 2015 panel believes that wearable technology has also progressed since last year’s Australian project, placing it at two to three years away from mainstream use. University of Southern Australia and Swinburne University of Technology have been instrumental in researching wearable technology applications and developing their own devices. A number of unique choices distinguished the perspectives expressed by the 2015 Australian panel from their counterparts. For example, they perceive open licensing as an important development in technology on the mid-term horizon. Institutions including Open Universities of Australia are removing the barriers for world-class educational resources by making them free or adaptable. Telepresence was also cited by the panel as a technology worth watching, as it helps make virtual conferencing and learning more lifelike. Similarly, augmented reality, also positioned on the far-term horizon, has the capacity to enhance interactions with mobile apps to make the content come alive. The 2015 Australian panel proposed another far-term topic different than their peers — the quantified self. There is an increasing emphasis in Australia on not only tracking learning, but also monitoring physical and other daily activities. Being able to analyse behavioural data can lead to improvements in health and unveil important patterns. These points and comparisons provide an important context for the main body of the report that follows.   © 2015, NMC An NMC Horizon Project Regional Report Page 4 Key Trends     Key Trends Accelerating Technology Adoption The technologies featured in the NMC Horizon Project are embedded within a contemporary context that reflects the realities of the time, both in the sphere of education and in the world at large. To assure this perspective, each panel member researches, identifies, and ranks key trends that are currently affecting policy, leadership, and practice in Australian tertiary education, and uses these as a lens for the work of predicting the uptake of emerging technologies. These ten trends, which the panel agreed are very likely to drive technology planning and decision-making over the next five years, were ranked in order of importance by the expert panel, with the first trend listed being deemed the most impactful. The trends were also framed by three time-related categories: short-term impact trends that are new and are poised to last only for the next one to two years and are bound to become pervasive in universities; mid-term impact trends that have been around for a few years already and will last for the next three to five years; and, long-term impact trends, which have been around for five years and will grow incrementally in Australian tertiary education over the next five or more years. 1. Increasing Use of Hybrid/Blended Learning Designs. Perceptions of online learning have been shifting in its favour as more learners and educators see it as a viable alternative to face-to- face learning. Drawing from best practices in online and face-to-face methods, blended learning is on the rise at Australian universities. Institutions including University of the Sunshine Coast, Griffith University, and the University of Western Sydney have developed blended learning strategies. Many faculty members are using lecture capture tools for students to watch online at home so that they can engage in substantial discussions during class. The flexibility, ease of access, and the integration of sophisticated multimedia and technologies are among the list of appeals. 2. Redesigning Learning Spaces. As Australian tertiary education continues to move away from traditional lecture-based programming to more hands-on scenarios, classrooms will start to resemble real-world work and social environments that facilitate organic interactions and cross- disciplinary problem solving. Wireless bandwidth is being upgraded in institutions to create “smart rooms” that support web conferencing and other methods of remote, collaborative communication. Large displays and screens are being installed to enable collaboration on digital projects and informal presentations. The University of South Australia developed learning spaces that motivate and promote innovative ways of thinking and deeper social connections. 3. Growing Focus on Measuring Learning. There is an increasing interest in using new sources of data for personalising learning experiences and ongoing formative assessment of learning. A key element of this trend is learning analytics, which is the application of web analytics, a science used by businesses to analyse commercial activities that leverages big data to identify spending trends and predict consumer behaviour. Education is embarking on a similar pursuit for learner profiling, a process of gathering and analysing large amounts of detail about individual student interactions. The goal is to build better pedagogies, empower students to take an active part in their learning, target at-risk student populations, and assess factors affecting student success. 4. Rethinking How Institutions Work. There is a focused movement to reinvent the traditional classroom paradigm and rearrange the entire university experience — a trend that is largely being driven by the influence of innovative learning approaches. Expert panellists see this trend teetering in the mid- to long-term impact range. Methods such as project- and challenge-based learning call for university structures that enable students to move from one learning activity to another more organically, better integrating different fields with each other. The multidisciplinary nature of contemporary approaches has brought attention to innovative designs of learning structures that link each course and subject matter to others.   © 2015, NMC An NMC Horizon Project Regional Report Page 5 Key Trends     5. Shift from Students as Consumers to Students as Creators. A shift is taking place in the focus of pedagogical practice in Australian universities as students across a wide variety of disciplines are learning by making and creating rather than from the simple consumption of content. Creativity, as illustrated by the growth of user-generated videos, maker communities, and crowdfunded projects in recent years, is increasingly the means for active, hands-on learning. Immersing students in activities that enable them to create their own understanding of a concept has far greater learning value than when passively or "engagingly" consuming. 6. Employment as the Definition of Successful Education. A majority of expert panellists view this trend as having a mid-term impact as students are increasingly concerned about the effect of their education on their future. Part-time work/study programmes minimise the cost of education and student debt, while maximising the ability to market oneself to future employers. The ability to stretch oneself, to explore areas where success is not guaranteed, is increasingly seen as a risky strategy that might compromise a transcript and reduce the chance of future employment — but may also open up students to new worlds. 7. Proliferation of Open Educational Resources (OER). Defined by the Hewlett Foundation in 2002, OER are “teaching, learning, and research resources that reside in the public domain or have been released under an intellectual property license that permits their free use and re-purposing by others.” Often mistaken to mean “free of charge,” advocates of openness have worked towards a common vision that defines it more broadly, including ownership and usage rights. Most of Australia’s top institutions are providers of open content and have created a wealth of materials now available on demand to anyone. At La Trobe University, for example, the Faculty of Health Sciences have successfully piloted a programme to develop and distribute OER and research practices using Wikiversity and the Wikimedia Foundation Projects. 8. Advancing Cultures of Change and Innovation. In order to breed innovation and adapt to economic needs, universities must be structured in ways that allow for flexibility, and spur creativity and entrepreneurial thinking. There is a growing consensus among thought leaders that Australian tertiary education leadership and curricula could benefit from agile startup models. Educators are working to develop new approaches and programmes that stimulate top-down change and can be implemented across a broad range of institutional settings. 9. Shift to Deeper Learning Approaches. Project-based, problem-based, inquiry-based, and challenge-based learning foster more active learning experiences, both inside and outside the classroom. Expert panellists were divided between categorising this trend as having a mid-term or long-term impact. As technologies such as tablets and smartphones are more readily accepted in universities, educators are leveraging these tools to connect the curriculum with real-life applications. The hope is that if learners can connect the course material with their own lives and their surrounding communities, then they will become more excited to learn and immerse themselves in the subject matter. 10. Increasing Cross-Institution Collaboration. More and more, institutions are joining consortia — associations of two or more organisations — to combine resources or to align themselves strategically with innovation in tertiary education. The expert panel agreed that this trend has mid-term impact implications in Australian tertiary education. Today’s global environment is allowing universities to unite across international borders and work toward common goals concerning technology, research, or shared values. Support behind technology-enabled learning in classrooms has reinforced the trend toward open communities and university consortia, as educators and administrators recognise collective action as a sustainable method of supporting upgrades in technological infrastructure and IT services.   © 2015, NMC An NMC Horizon Project Regional Report Page 6