Each year, the New Media Consortium (NMC), in cooperation with the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative, produces the Horizon report summarizing the latest findings from the NMC Horizon Project, an ongoing research project that identifies and describes important developments in technology likely to have a large impact on higher education worldwide over the coming five years.
The report identifies six key trends, six significant challenges, and six important developments likely to be important over the next one to five years. Each topic has been tied to essential questions of relevance or policy, leadership, and practice.
This year’s key trends: blended learning design, collaborative learning approaches, growing focus on measuring learning, redesigning learning spaces, advancing cultures of innovation, and deeper learning approaches.
This year’s significant challenges: improving digital literacy, integrating formal and informal learning, the achievement gap, advancing digital equity, managing knowledge obsolescence, and rethinking the roles of educators.
This year’s important developments: adaptive learning technologies, mobile learning, Internet of Things (IoT), next-generation Learning Management Systems (LMS), artificial intelligence, and natural user interfaces.
The full report (pdf) with details about each of the above themes is available at the NMC website.