Project Eagle Research Capsule (PERC) #25
May 2007

Data from Three Reports on Technological Trends
With an Impact on Higher Education

The Horizon Report

The New Media Consortium
and
The Educause Learning Initiative

February 2007

This report, the fourth of its kind, highlights six technologies that research suggests will become very important to higher education in one to five years.

Key Trends

• The environment of higher education is changing very rapidly. There is an increasing demand for new services to attract students and an increasing need for more distance education to both serve students and cut costs.
• Increasing globalization is changing the way we work, collaborate, and communicate. Much innovation is now fueled by those in southeast Asian nations, and globalization of information provides students with wider perspectives and resources than ever before.
• Information literacy increasingly should not be considered a given. The information literacy of new students is not increasing, and the need for critical thinking, research and evaluation skills has grown.
• Academic review and faculty rewards are increasingly out of sync with new forms of scholarship. Given the pace of change, the academic world will grow more out of step with the way scholarship takes place until constraints imposed by traditional tenure and promotion practices are eased.
• The notions of collective intelligence and mass amateurization are pushing the boundaries of scholarship. By using the Internet, amateurs and hobbyists now make real contributions in many fields, redefining the meaning and value of true scholarly work.
• Students’ views of what is and what is not technology are increasingly different from those of faculty. From small, flexible software tools to ubiquitous portable devices (e.g., monile phones), students today experience technology very differently from the way faculty do.

Critical Challenges

• Assessment of new forms of work (e.g., blogs, podcasts, videos) continues to present a challenge to educators and peer reviewers.
• There are significant shifts in scholarship, research, creative expression, and learning and a profound need for leadership at the highest levels of the academy that can see the opportunities in these shits and carry them forward.
• While progress is being made, issues of intellectual property and copyright continue to affect how scholarly work is done.
• There is a skill gap between understanding how to use tools for media creation and how to create meaningful content.
• The renewed emphasis on collaborative learning is pushing the educational community to develop new forms of interaction and assessment.
• Higher education is facing a growing expectation to deliver services, content and media to mobile and personal devices. The expectation of anytime, anywhere, access has not diminished.

Technologies to Watch

• User-created content. From blogs and photostreams to wikibooks and machinima clips, almost anyone can become a creator.
• Social Networking. Websites that offer this feature draw users back time after time and may offer a key way to increase student access to and participation in course activities.
• Mobile phones. With their rapidly increasing capabilities, “the time is approaching when these little devices will be as much a part of education as a bookbag.”
• Virtual worlds. Customized online spaces present the chance to collaborate and experience situations in ways that offer almost limitless opportunities for education.
• The new scholarship and emerging forms of publication. Just emerging as an important technology for higher education, new tools and new ways to create are influencing scholars.
• Massively multiplayer educational gaming. Another budding technology for higher education, educational games will continue to grow along with commercial ones.

Wireless Internet Access

John B. Horrigan
Pew Internet & American Life Project
February 2007

These statistics come from the results of 2373 telephone interviews conducted in December 2006.

• 34% of Internet users have logged on via wireless connection, using a laptop, PDA, or cell phone.
• 27% of wireless users have logged on from a place other than home or work, 19% from home networks (twice the number reported in January 2005), and 13% from PDAs.
• 25% of Internet users have wireless-enabled cell phones; 54% have used them to connect.
• Wireless network users show deeper involvement than others with email (72% vs. 54%) and news (38% vs. 31%) activities.
• Wireless users tend to be younger than Internet users in general. For those under 30,
  
  
  • 37% have logged on wirelessly. 40% have laptops, of which 88% are wireless-enabled.
  • 26% have wireless networks at home.
  • 40% have cell phones that can access the Internet.
  • 17% have PDAs that can connect to the Internet.

National Educational Technology Standards for Students

International Society for Technology in Education
January 4, 2007

This is the draft of the first revision in nine years of the National Educational Technology Standards (NETS), a pioneering set of guidelines for what students should know about, and be able to do with, technology.

• Creativity and Innovation. Students think creatively, construct knowledge and develop innovative products using technology.
• Communication and Collaboration. Students use digital media and environments to communicate and work collaboratively, including at a distance, to support individual learning and contribute to the learning of others.
• Research and Information Retrieval. Students access, retrieve, manage, and evaluate information using digital tools.
• Critical Thinking, Problem-Solving and Decision-Making. Students use critical thinking skills to plan and conduct research, manage projects, solve problems and make informed decisions using appropriate technology tools.
• Digital Citizenship. Students understand human, cultural, and societal issues related to technology and practice legal and ethical behavior.
• Technology operations and concepts. Students demonstrate a sound understanding of technology concepts, systems, and operations.

www.spcollege.edu/eagle/research/perc/perc25.htm
For a list of previous Project Eagle Research Capsules, go to www.spcollege.edu/eagle/research/perc/index.htm
For more information, contact the project manager: lechnerj@spcollege.edu

The contents of PERC were developed under a grant from the U. S. Department of Education (DOE). However, those contents do not necessarily represent the policy of the DOE, and you should not assume endorsement by the Federal Government.