Top Trends in Higher Education: 2015

 

The Future of (Online) Learning

 

I’ve been teaching a fully online graduate course for the past 13 years. It’s been interesting seeing the cutting-edge become mainstream (with some caveats). MOOCS have made their mark on the learning landscape, and the democratization of education is blossoming. Are exemplars like Khan Academy, TEDEd, YouTubeEDU and iTunesU the disruptive innovation for higher education?

These are not easy times for bricks-and-mortar institutions, grappling with a challenging funding climate and a competitive enrollment landscape, alongside student-as-consumer expectations of outstanding service (and sometimes grades). If that’s not enough, a massive cohort of faculty and administration who grew up in “traditional” classrooms come with a decidedly instructivist slant despite our constructivist intentions (I include myself in this). Maybe that’s why most classrooms are still oriented to a podium at the front, even in new builds. What happens when the hyper-connected, online-all-the-time iGen takes over?

Predicting the future is perilous, and I’m no fortune-teller. But my read on the state of higher education leads me to posit the following, “VUCA“-informed, present-vs-future, higher learning trends for 2015 and beyond:

 

Then and Now	Up-and-Coming
Instructor-generated content (Instructivism, Constructivism)	User-generated content (Paragogy, Heutagogy)
Lesson Plans	Gamification
Episodic assessment (occurs throughout a course)	Embedded assessment (assessment is “in the water”)
eLearning	mLearning, PLNs, Virtual World
Multimedia	Immersive multimedia
Siloed Content	APIs
Same content delivered to all learners	Prescriptive (customized) content
Opaque	Transparent
Learning feels like work	Learning feels like play