As the Instructional Technologies Council (ITC) continues our series of articles focusing on the anticipated effect of distance mastering more than the subsequent ten years, it is affordable for readers to be at least somewhat skeptical. So, I decided to do a tiny experiment with a sample of comfort and a sample of 1. 

About 13 years ago, my college president’s assistant told me that “the president wanted me to” predict the leading 5 technological innovations that will effect greater education inside the subsequent couple of years. My initial reaction was annoyance. Just after all, as I paraphrased in a blog post from 2010, asking me to predict how technologies will effect education is like asking the Wright brothers how frequent flyer miles will effect industrial air travel (I didn’t originate that comment, but I can not recall who did). My second reaction was to refer him to the Horizon Reports. Just after all, why need to I do the function when Educause was currently carrying out it.

Editor’s note: The Instructional Technologies Council continues its series of articles focusing on the anticipated effect of distance mastering more than the subsequent ten years.

Ultimately, I buckled down and wrote up the memo that ultimately became a weblog post. Let’s see how my predications that “the most crucial technological advances are not ‘things,’ they are usage improvements primarily based on what currently exists. Correct innovation will arise out of the ideas of convergence, integration, decoupling, social networks and predictive analytics” fared, following much more than a decade. 

How’d I do?

I was somewhat familiar with the ideas of incremental vs. disruptive innovation at the time, and I believed Dr. Christensen was a bit off the mark predicting disruptive innovation due to educational technologies, but I did really feel specific there would be incremental innovation. Just after all, as a keynote speaker at a lengthy-ago ITC Annual Conference after mentioned: “Technology does not modify pedagogy, pedagogues modify pedagogy.” And he then went on to make some really unflattering but proof-primarily based comments about the intransigence of pedagogues.

In 2010 I predicted convergence. To see if this came accurate, appear at your audio/visual departments and libraries. At one particular time, we had 16mm film projectors, 35mm filmstrip projectors, record players, cassette tape players, VHS video players, three/4” video players, overhead transparency projectors and so on. Nowadays nonetheless photos, moving photos, text, audio and video all come from our laptops by way of a single projector.  Libraries have migrated to (converged on) largely digital collections as nicely. So yes, the future can be predicted. That is one particular out of one particular.

How about integration? We do see examples of this taking place, but possibly not in such an apparent way.  Faculty maintain grades, attendance and course components on the exact same platform these days, and a decade ago that was not necessarily the case. But our LMS and ERP systems are nonetheless separate items from unique vendors, not as tightly integrated as they could be. So, let’s give that a .five for 1.five out of two.

Decoupling? Definitely! In the weblog I predicted, to a higher or lesser extent, the development of competency-primarily based education (CBE), micro-credentials and open educational sources. All of which are taking place. Plus, we see different combinations and permutations of decoupling, integration and convergence all taking place simultaneously. We’ve decoupled credentials from degree completion and award profession certificates and sector certifications by way of our non-credit or workforce improvement operations and then articulate them back towards college credits major to complete degrees. Or at least we need to be carrying out that! I’m claiming this is a great prediction bringing me to two.five out of 3.

Unexpected positive aspects and shortcomings

Now, my predictions about social networks may possibly be a stretch, if you assume I imply on the net solutions such as Facebook or Twitter. I do not and didn’t but solutions like these do let us network in strategies we couldn’t just before. I truly meant leveraging the energy of human interaction by means of technologies. For instance, one particular day, my then-teenage son began operating into and out of his bedroom and producing cup following cup of tea, holding every single one particular up to his webcam afterwards. It turns out that he had been playing laptop or computer games with a worldwide cohort of “friends” and somebody from England decided to teach the American kid how to make a “proper cuppa.” This form of impromptu educational knowledge would have been unthinkable just a couple of years earlier. 

When was the final time you Googled a job candidate, or posted an opening on a social network? Have you ever discovered how to repair your vehicle from watching a YouTube video? I have. Do you use a listerv to crowdsource the answer to thorny problems, or e-mail a colleague to see how they handled a thing comparable? You do this every single day, do not you – or at least, you have performed some of them. I’m taking the win.  three.five out of 4.

Ultimately, predictive analytics. Yeah, we’re attempting. Early alert systems, information dashboards and other tools are beginning to make inroads into greater education. But we’re nowhere close to exactly where our colleagues in small business and sector are. I anticipated we would be farther along by now. I’m only providing myself a score of .25, bringing my total to three.75 out of 5 or a total of 75% accuracy 13 years following my 2010 predictions.

Let’s answer the query in the title. Can we predict the future of instructional technologies? Certain, completely, some of the time, for broad basic categories.