2023:Towards

the future of higher

education

AAC&UAnnual Meeting

-January 2013

nitle.org

Communities of practice

Research

Joint projects

Outreach

Network platform: events f2f/online

Partnerships Translation

Grappling with the future

Caveat: the limits of emergent

Caveat: wild cards and Black Swans

Extraordinary political or economic event

Technology breakthrough (ex: AI, unrest)

Environmental scanning

Multiple sources

Should belongitudinal

Scan 2.0: crowdsourcing Social

networks Iterated

resource feeds

Scanner contributes content

Next 20 years? Screening Interacting Sharing Flowing Accessing Generating

-Kevin Kelly

Pattern recognition:Deductions from scanning

Delphi

Assemble experts

Probe for opinions

Rank and distill ideas

Reiterate

Horizon trends, 2013

Time-to-Adoption Horizon: One Year or Less Massively Open Online Courses

Tablet Computing

Horizon trends, 2013

Time-to-Adoption Horizon: Two to Three Years Big Data and Learning Analytics

Game-Based Learning

Horizon trends, 2013

Time-to-Adoption Horizon: Four to Five Years 3D Printing Wearable Technology

Futures markets Propositions in time Shares to be traded

How many American universities will have online, open, credentialed programs

by the end of 2012?

Why do this? Quant. +

Qual. Affordances of

play

Continuous Distributed

feedback

Scenarios Stories about futures Event and response Creativity

Roles and times Emergent practices

and patterns

Scenarios

Integrate previous methods: Select drivers –

environmental scan Identify trends – Delphi

reports Test trends - extrapolation Test propositions –

prediction markets

Trendline analysis

More Asian liberal arts campuses

State university gaming company

Social media growth continues

"Generation Screwed" vs seniors online

Microsoft tablet Google US-

sources hardware

More Asian than Hispanic immigrants

Certification rising

New OLI use cases

Kickstarter continues to grow

One R1 tries to cut libraries down

Academic unions crit distance learning

July 2012 scan sample

Senior job retention

Government-supported maker classes

MOOCs: more; mutations

Google Course-builder

New badges initiative

Google Glass video shooting

3d printing lab equipment

US R+D low MBA bubble? Adjunct

discrimination by time

September 2012 scan sample

British MOOC enterprise

The United States birthrate fell to its lowest level since 1920

student-library disconnection

academic social media use cases

cloud computing price war

printer sales stagnate

Android dominates smartphones

3d printing in Staples

adjunct union organization

enrolled undergraduates decline

January 2013 scan sample

Demographic crunch and few spikes

More MOOCs Online

coursetaking rises

F2f enrollment stalls

Open edu expands

Digital humanities grows

Athletics spending does well

Shale oil -> edu spending

Facebook search launches

February 2013 scan sample

Trendline categories

1. Economics and college finances2. Communities and populations3. Teaching and learning and tech4. Technology ecosystem5. The future of liberal education6. MOOCs7. Scholarship

Major driver: ubiquitous computing

Mark Weiser, 1988ff Example: "The Computer

for the Twenty-First Century" (1991)

“The most profound technologies are those that disappear. They weave

themselves into the fabric of everyday life until they are indistinguishable from it.”

Augmented Reality

First, the light stuff Museum tours GPS navigators

(Garmin) Location services

(Yelp)

Searchthe

world

Multimedia lives here

AR art

Interface changes

Gartner: end of the mouse

Touch screen (iOS) Handhelds (Wii) Nothing (Kinect)

Wild card driver: gaming

Gaming as part of mainstream culture

Median age of gamers shoots past 35

Industry size comparable to music

Impacts on hardware, software, interfaces, other industries

Large and growing diversity of platforms, topics, genres, niches, players

Gaming as part of mainstream culture

Anecdata: number of Facebook CityVille players:

(as of July 2012, http://www.appdata.com/?AFB_redir=1 )

23,900,000

Games serious, public, and political

• Oiligarchy, Molle Industries• Jetset, Persuasive Games• The Great Shakeout, California• DimensionM, Tabula Digita

Gamification

Gaming extends throughout everyday life:

…literally…practically…conceptually

Very explicitly about behavior modification

Imperial gamification

Large simulations are normal

(political and

mundane)

Use games to impact society

Five possible futures

1.Phantom Learning 2.Open world3.The Lost Decade4.The Serpent Digests a

Very Large Mammal5.Renaissance

I: Phantom learning

Post-tsunami Schools are rare and distant

Information is plentiful and nearby

Learning

Information on demand

Instructors, peers “ “ Grading outsourced Multimedia: social, personalized

Institutions Function: content supplements

Faculty: adjunct rōnin

Accreditation: online, multiple, display-based

Institutions Library: media production camp

Professional development: via social media

Students spent more time in K-12 with online classes than face-to-face ones

K-12 as social center, working parent support spaces

Libraries are software Buildings without AR look

naked

MOOCs?

No, MOOCsNo good categorical name:

…which sometimes indicates the future

II: Open world Open content, open access, open source

• Very Web-centric

Good things Global conversations increase, filter bubble pops

More access, more information

Lots of creativity

Good things on campus Information prices drop Faculty creativity, flexibility grow

IT “ “ “ Academic content unleashed on the world

Not so good things

Industries collapse Authorship mysterious Some low quality tech (videoconf.)

Some higher costs More malware + less privacy

How does this impact campuses?

Tech challenges Outsourcing and offshoring

PLE beats LMS Crowdsourcing faculty work

Information literacy central

Internet has always been open

Web <> money Online identity has always been fictional, playful

III: The Lost Decade

Model:

Japan in the 1990s

Decay sets in

Chronic popular discontent

Media battles

Higher education landscape: Two Cultures redux: STEM

vs New Left Adjunct faculty 95% Public institutions’

shrunken footprints Scholarly publication 1/3rd

2000 level

Higher education landscape: Accreditation: the source of closures

Libraries: rare and/or smaller

Professional development: distance, DiY

Great Recession began in 1st grade One or more family members

unemployed “ “ “ “ “ underemployed Public education has always been

stretched to breaking point/poor Public-private gap even wider Online learning can beat their

schools “Library” denotes digital collection

IV: The Serpent Digests a Very Large Mammal

How it happened

Economic growth returns to US (energy, medical, nanotech vs world)

17-22-year-old niche revitalized (K-12 failure)

Full-time faculty stabilize (AAUP-ALA strike)

Digital tech firewalled from class (i.e., tv + film)

Higher education landscape: Supplemental rather than

transformative tech Logistical instead of

pedagogical tech Academics include tech in

old structures (classes, publication)

Reconfigured to protect IP

18-year-olds were .ppt proficient by 5th grade

Schools <> digital life They find their parents’ recollections of life before the web are oddly charming

V. Renaissance

Gaming world

Classroom and courses Curriculum content Delivery mechanism Creating games

Peacemaker, Impact Games

Revolution (via Jason Mittell)

• Joost Raessens and Jeffrey Goldstein, eds, Handbook of Computer Game Studies (MIT, 2005)

• Frans Mayra, An Introduction to Game Studies (Sage, 2008)

• Pat Harrigan and Noah Wardrip-Fruin, eds. Third Person: Authoring and Exploring Vast Narratives (MIT, 2009)

Game studies as academic field

How is gaming used now?

Some impacts on campuses

Changes in hardware, software

Part of undergraduate life Learning content, both informal and formal

Career paths

Higher education landscape: Accreditation: drives project-

based, studio-style pedagogy Libraries: gaming production,

archiving Professional development:

distance, DiY Faculty multimedia production

is the norm

Elsewhere in the world: War on IP rages Nostalgia waves for old media

Competing storytelling schools

Most students identified with one+ game characters in K-12

Leading game developers are as well known as movie directors

Most of their work and school is gamified

Five possible futures

1.Phantom Learning 2.Open world3.The Lost Decade4.The Serpent Digests a

Very Large Mammal5.Renaissance

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