In a world where libraries are completely reinventing themselves, where universities, schools and research facilities are moving away from conventional IT departments to BYOD, and where the focus of everything seems to be on mobiles – what will be the role and impact of technology on learning (in the broadest sense) in the next decade?
What do leading institutions (academic and corporate) need to be doing now to prepare? What are the strategies that will provide them the most flexibility? And, with the increasing monetisation of education, what will yield the greatest competitive advantage?
These are huge questions and I do not profess to know all the answers; however the following ten trends do go some way to provoke debate, discussion and thought:
The world of work is increasingly global and increasingly collaborative.As more and more companies move to the global marketplace, it is common for work teams to span continents and time zones. Not only are teams geographically diverse, they are also culturally diverse.
People expect to work, learn, socialise, and play whenever and wherever they want.Increasingly, people own more than one device – a computer, smartphone, tablet, eReader, etc. People now expect a seamless experience across all their devices.
The internet is becoming a global mobile network.MobiThinking reported there are now more than six billion active mobile (cell) phone accounts. Some 1.2 billion have mobile broadband as well, and 85% of new devices can access the mobile web.
The technologies used are increasingly cloud-based and delivered over utility networks, facilitating the rapid growth of online videos and content rich media.Current thinking is that cloud-based networks have almost infinite capacity and nearly free of cost. One hour of video footage is uploaded every second to YouTube; over 250 million photos are sent to Facebook every day.
Openness – concepts like open content, open data, and open resources, along with notions of transparency and easy access to data and information – is moving from a trend to a value for much of the world.As authoritative sources lose their importance, there is need for more curation and other forms of validation to generate meaning in information and media.
Legal notions of ownership and privacy lag behind the practices common in society.In an age where so much of our information, records, and digital content are in the cloud, and often clouds in other legal jurisdictions, the very concept of ownership is blurry to say the least.
Real challenges of access, efficiency, and scale are redefining what we mean by quality and success.Access to learning in any form is a challenge in many parts of the world, and efficiency in learning systems and institutions is increasingly an expectation of governments. Innovations in these areas are increasingly coming from emerging markets, including India, China, and central Africa.
The internet is constantly challenging people to rethink learning and education, while refining the notion of literacy.Institutions must consider the unique value that each adds to a world in which information is everywhere. In such a world, sense-making and the ability to assess the credibility of information and media are paramount.
There is a rise in informal learning as individual needs are redefining schools, universities, and career training.Traditional authority is increasingly being challenged, not only politically, socially and corporately, but also in academia – and worldwide. As a result, credibility, validity, and control are all notions that are no longer givens when so much learning takes place outside traditional systems.
Business models across the education environment are changing.Libraries are rethinking their missions; schools, colleges, universities and similar are struggling to reduce costs. The educational environment is shifting, and nowhere more so than in the world of publishing, where efforts to reimagine the book are having real success, with implications that may well affect many aspects of learning.
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