Higher Education Tech Forecast Sees MOOC, Tablet Momentum

As interesting as these key technologies, so are the underlying trends and obstacles the NMC Horizon report identified.

The major trends:

-- Openness and transparency as values in their own right.

-- MOOCs as supplements to traditional university courses, attractive to faculty seeking a massive, global audience.

-- Workforce demands for skills more commonly learned in informal settings, rather than the university.

-- Using the large amounts of data generated by online experiences to personalize learning and measure performance.

-- The changing role of educators now that students have access to vast amount of information on the Web.

-- Shifting education paradigms that encompass online learning, hybrid learning and collaboration.

The obstacles:

-- Faculty training does not acknowledge the importance of digital literacy.

-- Scholarly evaluation has yet to encompass new modes of publishing, feedback and recognition.

-- Inertia and comfort with the status quo.

-- The demand for personalized learning is not yet fully supported by available technologies.

-- New models of education are challenging traditional institutions of higher education with competition they have not faced before.

-- Most academics are not using new technologies for learning, teaching or organizing their own research.

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