2008 Horizon Report

Significant Trends

Each year the Horizon Advisory Board also researches, identifies and ranks key trends affecting the areas of teaching, learning, and creative expression. The Board reviews current articles, interviews, papers, and published research to discover emerging or continuing trends. The trends are ranked according to how significant an impact they are likely to have on education in the next five years. The top trends are presented below in priority order, as ranked by the Advisory Board.

• The growing use of Web 2.0 and social networking—combined with collective intelligence and mass amateurization—is gradually but inexorably changing the practice of scholarship. The proliferation of tools that enable co-creation, mashups, remixes, and instant self-publication is remaking the traditional model of academic publication and has growing implications for tenure and merit systems. Web 2.0 and social networking tools are increasingly being adopted for educational use. In the sciences especially, amateur scholars are juxtaposing data into “data mashups” and creating sophisticated visual representations that add to the body of knowledge in compelling ways. Taken together, the increased use of these technologies indicates a steady change in the way scholarship is undertaken and perceived.
• The way we work, collaborate, and communicate is evolving as boundaries become more fluid and globalization increases. This trend, noted in last year’s Horizon Report as well, still is having enduring impact, and continues to expand learning and creative possibilities. With the increasing availability of tools to connect learners and scholars all over the world—online collaborative workspaces, social networking tools, mobiles, Skype, and more—it is increasingly common to see courses that include international students who meet online or incorporate connections between classrooms in different areas of the world.
• Access to—and portability of—content is increasing as smaller, more powerful devices are introduced. Electronic book readers like the Amazon Kindle and small but powerful web-enabled devices like the Apple iPhone and the LG Electronics Voyager make it possible to carry vast amounts of information in a small package. Movies, books, email, and more are available on these lightweight, portable platforms and given the pace of innovation in this market, ever increasing capabilities and happily decreasing prices, their use will only grow in influence.
• The gap between students’ perception of technology and that of faculty continues to widen. Students and faculty continue to view and experience technology very differently. Students have embraced social technologies like Facebook and many similar platforms in unprecedented numbers, yet these technologies remain a mystery to many on campuses. Webware tools with clear potential for education are meeting the same reception: faculty are often either unaware of tools like Google Docs and Swivel, or have difficulty integrating them into educational processes. Serving to expand this gap is the withering pace of emerging technology, and even old technology hands often tire at the thought of learning yet another new way of working. At the same time, student expectations are important, and successful learning-focused organizations have long known they ignore these expectations at their peril.