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As tech tools continue to proliferate with new launches and new products, it’s difficult to predict what will stick and what won’t. A recently released report by the New Media Consortium and EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI) tries to sift through the fads and find the few that will have a real impact on education in the next few years.

What’s worth noting? Sometimes what seemed impossible only a few years ago has already become a new trend. The 2013 NMC Horizon’s Report on Higher Education, which brings together international experts in education and technology, attempts to take the pulse of emerging technologies in higher education and predict where the field will move in the near, middle and far term.

The report points to MOOCs, Massive Open Online Courses, as the big change agent in the higher ed landscape, but it also reaches a little further, bringing 3D printing and wearable technology into the mix.

KEY FACTORS

The panel considered some key factors influencing whether technologies take hold, identifying a move towards “open” content and the ability to share, manipulate, and mold. Even more critical for institutions of higher education is the rise of MOOCs. As more elite institutions align themselves with one MOOC organization or another, university leaders are considering the idea of “micro-credit” as an alternative to the traditional credits given at brick and mortar universities.

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Equally important to information access are skills that employers expect recent graduates to bring with them — like communication and critical thinking. These skills are often augmented by real-world or informal learning experiences that move beyond the college lecture hall. Acknowledging that the trend of personalization and taking it a step further, the report also notes the increasing importance of learning analytics. Colleges will need to follow a student’s digital footprint to better tailor their educational experience. And all of this means a different role for university instructors. Students have much better access to knowledge through technology which necessitates that professors become mentors, collaborators, facilitators and ultimately not the center of the learning experience.

CHALLENGES

By and large the biggest barriers to implementing technology in higher education are the institutions and people who run them. Employers increasingly recognize that digital media literacy is an important skill set in the coming decades, but university faculty are neither equipped to teach those skills nor especially proficient themselves in many cases.

Lack of digital fluency is affecting scholarly collaboration, as well. Social media, blogging, link backs and other tech-based publication methods are not well understood or recognized by older, traditional faculty and administration. It’s far easier to continue with the status quo and too often professors trying new things are seen as teaching outside their role. This stodgy mentality stifles innovation.

The panel also found that while there is a hunger for more personalized learning, the demand is not well supported by the technology. The mechanics of earning analytics are still in the nascent stages. Collecting, collating, and understanding the sheer volume of data is overwhelming to most at traditional universities. Many college instructors are not using technology in their research or in their teaching. It would take a larger cultural shift before many technologies could be considered widespread.

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Lastly, the competition that MOOCs are bringing to the long-held university system is challenging the value of higher education. Many argue the competition is exactly what slow-moving universities need to change, but others wonder if the instruction offered by MOOCs reaches the same caliber. “As these new platforms emerge, however, there is a need to frankly evaluate the models and determine how to best support collaboration, interaction, and assessment at scale. Simply capitalizing on new technology is not enough; the new models must use these tools and services to engage students on a deeper level,” the report notes.

NEAR-TERM PREDICTIONS (WITHIN THE YEAR)

Both MOOCs and tablets will be widely adopted in university settings within the year. The popularity of MOOCs like Coursera, Udacity and edX are undeniable with enrollment in some classes exceeding 100,000 students. Unparalleled access excites many people, but raises questions. “One of the most appealing promises of MOOCs is that they offer the possibility for continued, advanced learning at zero cost, allowing students, life-long learners, and professionals to acquire new skills and improve their knowledge and employability,” notes the report.

As for tech hardware, tablets fit well with the university lifestyle. They’re light, portable, and allow students to interact with the lesson and their networks at the same time. Competition in the tablet space has increased, driving down the price and pushing the limits of capability. The report predicts tablet manufacturers will continue to offer more robust options for less money.

MID-TERM (TWO TO THREE YEARS)

A big prediction here is the rise of games and gamification to encourage students to participate with material in deeper ways. Educational gaming might seem like old news to some, but most often gaming comes up in a K-12 context. Now the same benefits are being applied to older students and more complicated subjects. Most of the excitement centers on gamification – integrating mechanics of games into non-game situations to inspire creativity and productivity. The strategy works well for many businesses and is gradually making its way onto college campuses.

Similarly, the report predicts that learning analytics will find a foothold in higher education in the next few years. “Student-specific data can now be used to customize online course platforms and suggest resources to students in the same way that businesses tailor advertisements and offers to customers,” the report said. Universities are already using big data to improve advising and help offer advice and strategies to struggling learners to improve retention. The data can also help universities to better allocate resources, fill holes and accurately understand how well they are serving students.

LONG TERM (FOUR TO FIVE YEARS)

The rise of the Maker movement has helped launch 3D printing back into the NMC Horizons predictions where it first appeared in 2004. The emphasis on design learning and DIY culture make 3D printers appealing.

Wearable technology will take off on college campuses as thin film technology makes it possible for screens to mold around body curves. And these devices aren’t just cool. “Wearable devices are also proving to be effective tools for research because they use sensors to track data, such as vital signs, in real-time. Although wearable technology is not yet pervasive in higher education, the current highly functional clothing and accessories in the consumer space show great promise,” the report says.

The Infinite Thinking Machine is back after a summer hiatus. This episode focusing on gamification features a great rundown of learning games and programs, including Minecraft, Gamestar Mechanic, NYC Haunts, and Gamedesk, a game company that recently opened a game-based learning school within a school in Los Angeles.

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Chocolate-covered broccoli. That’s what designers of educational games call digital products that drape dull academic instruction in the superficially appealing disguise of a game. Instead of placing the fun of discovery and mastery at the heart of the game, these imposters use the trappings of games “as a sugar coating” for their otherwise unappetizing content, note Jacob Habgood and Shaaron Ainsworth.

The two researchers, from the University of Nottingham in England, recently decided to find out whether children could detect such subterfuge, and whether they benefited more from lessons that masquerade as games—or from games that make learning an end in itself.

Habgood and Ainsworth began by creating a game, called Zombie Division, that aimed to teach math to students aged seven to 11. In the authors’ words, Zombie Division “is a 3D adventure game based around sword fighting in which the player (acting as the hero Matrices) must use different attacks to mathematically divide opponents according to the numbers on their chests.”

The scientists designed two different variants of the game: an “intrinsic” version, in which mastery of mathematical challenges produced rewards within the game, and an “extrinsic” version, in which a period of play was followed by an online math quiz. Both types contained the same instructional content, but in the extrinsic version that content was “delivered away from flow-inducing

game-play, and presented as abstract mathematical questions,” the researchers note. (“Flow,” as many gamers know, is a psychological state characterized by energetic, engaged immersion.) In the intrinsic model of the game, for example, a player who correctly divided his opponent with his sword would be rewarded by seeing his foe split into a proportional number of ghosts. In the quiz built into the extrinsic model, a player would simply be notified that her answer to a division problem was correct.

In Habgood and Ainsworth’s experiment, reported in the Journal of the Learning Sciences, one group of students was assigned to play the intrinsic version of Zombie Division for two hours. A second group played the extrinsic version for the same length of time. Afterward, both groups were tested on their knowledge of division.

The results were clear: The children who had played the intrinsically-rewarding game learned more math. Next, the researchers allowed another group of children to choose the option they preferred. The verdict here was even more definitive: The pupils spent seven times longer playing the intrinsic version of Zombie Division.

Many educational games fail to live up to their promise of effective, enjoyable learning; Habgood and Ainsworth suggest that’s because the games rely on an extrinsic reward structure, bestowing gold stars for good performance instead of making the incentives internal to the game. The key to creating a successful educational game, the authors conclude, is what they call “intrinsic integration”: ensuring that the mechanics of the game mesh tightly with the content the game is trying to teach. It’s a lesson that applies to offline education, too: Make the vegetables themselves taste good, and you won’t have to bribe kids with chocolate.

Nestor Gallina

Gamification is one of the new buzzwords in social media circles. It’s the idea that by making non-gaming applications more game-like — by adding points, badges, levels, titles and other game mechanics — these apps become more fun and engaging.

We see gamification at work in apps like Foursquare, where “checking in” and giving your location via the app earns you points and potentially the “mayorship” of venues. Even though the term may be new to some, gamification has been used for years for offline services too, such as earning points and unlocking special deals via frequent flyer programs.

The question now is whether (or how) gamification can be used in education. Are there ways in which it can be used to similar ends, to help students feel more involved and engaged in their learning?

In some ways, education is already replete with this sort of thing. You gain points (via assignments) to level up (in grades) and eventually win with a badge (your diploma). But that’s not really game-play. The premise behind “gamifying” educational applications and websites is to instigate engagement and collaboration.

To that end, the social learning network OpenStudy has unveiled some new rewards for active participants on the site — namely, medals and achievements — a first step in adding game mechanics to its site.

OpenStudy provides a place where learners can find others working in similar content areas in order to support each other and answer each others’ questions. The site is a recipient of one of the Gates Foundation’s recent Next Generation Learning Challenges for its work building out a global study network around opencourseware materials.

Those who are studying OpenCourseware are often, but not always, independent learners. While the OCW materials contain lecture notes, assignments, quizzes, PowerPoints, and sometimes videos, what they’re missing two big components: an instructor and a class. OpenStudy helps ameliorate the isolation for students by giving them a forum where they share questions and answers in real-time — where they can study together. In a popular class like MIT’s “Introduction to Computer Science,” there are so many learners signed up for Open Study that there are usually around 30 online at the same time.

The new gamification elements aim to meet a couple of OpenStudy’s goals: to make education more accessible by distributing the responsibility of teaching among an online group of peers, and to make education more enjoyable by making it game-like.

Even without the new rewards system for helping, plenty of users on OpenStudy already offer each other help. Some of the most loyal users of the site happen to also be some of the most active with offering their assistance. The gamification elements will recognize these helpful users, and encourage the behavior to spread.

The new features include the following:

Medals: Students can give medals to helpful peers. Medals are tracked at the study group level, so users will be able to see how helpful they are across different subjects.

Achievements: These will reward students for asking questions, socializing, engaging in particularly elaborate dialogue, and more. These will be rewarded both within study groups (for interacting with a particular subject) and across the site as a whole.

Fans: This will be OpenStudy’s version of testimonials, so users can become “fans” of people who’ve helped them. As you amass fans, you can unlock new titles and move from being a “pupil” to a “hero.”

After just one day in action, the site already has users who are “Super Heroes” with over 300 fans. OpenStudy is already a fairly active community — but the badges and titles may help it become even more robust.

Educators, have you used gamification tactics in class? Do points and badges make learning more engaging for students?