Bevil Wood­ing

In to­day's dig­i­tal­ly con­nect­ed world, us­ing tech­nol­o­gy to im­prove ed­u­ca­tion in­sti­tu­tions and process­es is not a ques­tion of if, but of when and how. Ed­u­ca­tion sec­tor lead­ers are be­ing con­stant­ly chal­lenged to re­think their core mod­els in the on­go­ing quest to re­form the process­es of teach­ing and learn­ing.

Tech­nol­o­gy has al­ways played a crit­i­cal role in this quest, from sys­tems de­signed to re­duce the cost of ad­min­is­ter­ing ed­u­ca­tion in­sti­tu­tions to so­lu­tions for mak­ing teach­ing and learn­ing more in­ter­ac­tive and en­gag­ing. In fact ed­u­ca­tion tech­nol­o­gy spend­ing con­tin­ues to rise, even with pres­sure be­ing ap­plied to ed­u­ca­tion bud­gets across the world.

"An in­creas­ing num­ber of tech­ni­cal in­no­va­tions and tech­nol­o­gy trends are emerg­ing...dri­ven by ma­jor forces such as dig­i­tal busi­ness and the con­sumeri­sa­tion and in­dus­tri­al­i­sa­tion of IT," ac­cord­ing to Jan-Mar­tin Lowen­dahl, vice pres­i­dent at re­search firm Gart­ner.

Gart­ner has iden­ti­fied the top 10 strate­gic tech­nolo­gies for the ed­u­ca­tion in­dus­try in 2015.

It is a list of strate­gic tech­nolo­gies that Gart­ner rec­om­mends ed­u­ca­tion CIO should have a plan for in 2015...and be­yond:

1. Adap­tive learn­ing

Adap­tive learn­ing is a type of crowd­sourc­ing and big da­ta col­lec­tion. The val­ue of adap­tive learn­ing lies in the meta­da­ta at­tached to each learn­ing "morsel," which must then be com­bined with enough em­pir­i­cal da­ta of stu­dents try­ing to mas­ter the top­ic to al­low per­son­alised learn­ing. It is ex­treme­ly valu­able in de­sign­ing the ped­a­gogy of the fu­ture.

2. Adap­tive e-text­books

Un­like tra­di­tion­al print ma­te­ri­als, e-text­books can be edit­ed to in­clude up-to-date in­for­ma­tion, be as­sem­bled or dis­as­sem­bled, or in­clude con­tent from oth­er sources and so­cial in­ter­ac­tion.

Adap­tive e-text­books add the el­e­ment of track­ing stu­dent in­ter­ac­tion with the text, and adapt­ing to the learn­ing style. E-text­books are the first key step of go­ing from ana­log to dig­i­tal ed­u­ca­tion.

3. Cus­tomer re­la­tion­ship man­age­ment (CRM)

Cus­tomer re­la­tion­ship man­age­ment (CRM) is now a wide­ly recog­nised tool for track­ing and man­ag­ing re­la­tion­ships with con­stituents, in­clud­ing prospec­tive and cur­rent stu­dents, par­ents, alum­ni, cor­po­ra­tions, bene­fac­tors and oth­er friends of the in­sti­tu­tion. A main hur­dle to im­ple­men­ta­tion is the dif­fi­cul­ty of stan­dar­d­is­ing and in­te­grat­ing in­sti­tu­tion­al da­ta.

4. Big da­ta

Big da­ta in ed­u­ca­tion is has the pos­si­bil­i­ty to im­prove the whole ed­u­ca­tion ecosys­tem. It is as­so­ci­at­ed with col­lect­ing vast amounts of da­ta from the digi­tised ac­tiv­i­ties of stu­dents, par­ents, fac­ul­ty and staff, trans­form­ing that in­to in­for­ma­tion, and pro­duc­ing or rec­om­mend­ing ac­tions aimed at im­prov­ing in­sti­tu­tion out­comes.

5. Sourc­ing strate­gies

Not a tech­nol­o­gy in it­self, sourc­ing strate­gies rep­re­sent a col­lec­tion of tech­nolo­gies and ven­dor ser­vices, from host­ing to cloud, home­grown to open source, to sub­scrip­tion mod­els for ac­quir­ing soft­ware/hard­ware ca­pa­bil­i­ties. A sourc­ing strat­e­gy is a set of sce­nar­ios, plans, di­rec­tives and de­ci­sions that dy­nam­i­cal­ly de­fine and in­te­grate in­ter­nal and ex­ter­nal re­sources and ser­vices re­quired to ful­fill an en­ter­prise's busi­ness ob­jec­tives.

Strate­gic sourc­ing helps IT to fo­cus from ad­min­is­tra­tive trans­ac­tions and op­er­a­tional sup­port to­ward ac­tiv­i­ties that en­able dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion and in­no­va­tion for the in­sti­tu­tion.

6. Ex­ostruc­ture

Ex­ostruc­ture strat­e­gy is the crit­i­cal ca­pa­bil­i­ty of in­ter­op­er­abil­i­ty as a de­lib­er­ate strat­e­gy to in­te­grate the in­creas­ing num­bers of part­ner­ships, tools and ser­vices in the ed­u­ca­tion ecosys­tem.

When done right, an ex­ostruc­ture ap­proach en­ables in­sti­tu­tions to lever­age ser­vices from the cloud, rather than hav­ing to bring them in­side the cam­pus walls.

En­abled by stan­dards, it can al­low the in­sti­tu­tion to adapt faster. With the in­creas­ing in­ter­de­pen­den­cies in the ed­u­ca­tion ecosys­tem, Gart­ner sees it the fu­ture as be­long­ing to ex­ostruc­ture rather than to in­fra­struc­ture.

7. Open mi­cro­cre­den­tials

Mi­cro­cre­den­tials in the form of var­i­ous badges or points have ex­ist­ed for some time in dig­i­tal so­cial en­vi­ron­ments in gen­er­al, and in learn­ing en­vi­ron­ments in par­tic­u­lar. A key prob­lem is that these en­vi­ron­ments are pro­pri­etary, which makes it dif­fi­cult to dis­play achieve­ments out­side of them. Open mi­cro­cre­den­tials aims to rem­e­dy that prob­lem.

For ed­u­ca­tion in­sti­tu­tions, is­su­ing open mi­cro­cre­den­tials is a low-cost, high-val­ue, tech­nol­o­gy-based ca­pa­bil­i­ty that will pro­vide more val­ue and mo­ti­va­tion to stu­dents.

Gart­ner sees it as a clear strate­gic tech­nol­o­gy with a rel­a­tive­ly small in­vest­ment in­volved, there­by mak­ing it a low-hang­ing fruit with good ROI.

8. Dig­i­tal as­sess­ment

Dig­i­tal as­sess­ment is ul­ti­mate­ly about be­ing able to do any as­sess­ment dig­i­tal­ly, to re­move the need for phys­i­cal­ly teth­ered as well as hu­man-proc­tored tests and im­prove modes of test­ing, grad­ing and da­ta analy­sis. The first-lev­el ap­pli­ca­tion of dig­i­tal as­sess­ments is to in­crease trust in on­line ed­u­ca­tion by ap­ply­ing iden­ti­fi­ca­tion mech­a­nisms, such as key­stroke iden­ti­fi­ca­tion or cloud-based face recog­ni­tion. Good dig­i­tal as­sess­ment is a ne­ces­si­ty for trust­wor­thy and scal­able on­line or hy­brid (dig­i­talised) ed­u­ca­tion, and will re­main a strate­gic tech­nol­o­gy un­til it is solved.

9. Mo­bile

Mo­bile is a pop­u­lar term for per­va­sive ac­cess via many types of de­vices. Mo­bile is not sim­ply a syn­onym for mo­bile smart­phones or tablets. Mo­bile in ed­u­ca­tion in­cludes use in all as­pects of the acad­e­my: ad­min­is­tra­tion, ed­u­ca­tion and re­search. How­ev­er, the do­main is ma­tur­ing sur­pris­ing­ly slow­ly.

In­hibitors still in­clude smart­phone cost, de­vice lim­i­ta­tions (such as bat­tery life), the de­vel­op­ment of m-learn­ing course ma­te­ri­als, lack of skills and the wide di­ver­si­ty of mo­bile de­vices. Ed­u­ca­tion CIOs will need to treat mo­bile as a strate­gic tech­nol­o­gy for sev­er­al years

10. So­cial learn­ing

So­cial learn­ing gives learn­ers the abil­i­ty to es­tab­lish a pres­ence or so­cial pro­file that re­flects their ex­per­tise and in­ter­est; to cre­ate, dis­cuss, share and cap­ture learn­ing con­tent as learn­ing ob­jects; to or­gan­ise and find learn­ing ob­jects from a va­ri­ety of sources, such as search or peer rat­ings; to in­ter­act with peers in their so­cial net­works and be able to reach be­yond their net­works to oth­er trust­ed sources of in­for­ma­tion; to en­gage in ex­pe­ri­ence-based learn­ing ex­er­cis­es; and to re­ceive re­al-time on­line coach­ing and sup­port.

Bevil Wood­ing is chief knowl­edge of­fice at Con­gress WBN (C-WBN) an in­ter­na­tion­al non-prof­it or­gan­i­sa­tion and ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor at the ed­u­ca­tion tech­nol­o­gy non-prof­it, Bright­Path Foun­da­tion, re­spon­si­ble for C-WBN's tech­nol­o­gy ed­u­ca­tion and out­reach ini­tia­tives. Fol­low on Twit­ter: @bevil­wood­ing