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universidad de costa rica recinto de paraíso curso taller informático para la enseñanza del inglés profesor m.a olga ligia brenes m resumen del reporte horizon estudiante verónica vargas dimarco id a76752 1

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contents executive summary 3 time-to-adoption horizon one year or less mobile apps 09 tablet computing 10 time-to-adoption horizon two to three years game-based learning 11 learning analytics 22 time-to-adoption horizon four to five years gesture-based computing 12 internet of things 13 methodology 14 2

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executive summary the internationally recognized nmc horizon report series and regional nmc technology outlooks are part of the nmc horizon project a comprehensive research venture established in 2002 that identifies and describes emerging technologies likely to have a large impact over the coming five years in education around the globe this volume the nmc horizon report 2012 higher education edition was again produced in a collaborative effort with the educause learning initiative an educause program and examines emerging technologies for their potential impact on teaching learning and creative inquiry within the higher education environment the technologies featured in each edition of the nmc horizon report are embedded within a contemporary context that reflects the realities of the time both in the sphere of higher education and in the world at large key trends ensure this context was well understood the advisory board engaged in an extensive review of current articles interviews papers and new research to identify and rank trends that are currently affecting teaching learning and creative inquiry in higher education once detailed the list of trends was then ranked according to how significant each was likely to be for higher education in the next five years the highest ranked of those trends had significant agreement among the advisory board members who considered them to be key drivers of educational technology adoptions for the period 2012 through 2017 they are listed here in the order in which the advisory board ranked them 1 people expect to be able to work learn and study whenever and wherever they want to life in an increasingly busy world where learners must balance demands from home work school and family poses a host of logistical challenges with which today s evermore mobile students must cope people want easy and timely access not only to the information on the network but also to tools resources and up-to-the moment analysis and commentary these needs as well as the increasingly essential access to social media and networks have risen to the level of expectations the opportunities for informal learning in the modern world are abundant and diverse and greatly expand on earlier notions like just-in-time or found learning 3

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2 the technologies we use are increasingly cloud-based and our notions of it support are decentralized the continuing acceptance and adoption of cloud-based applications and services is changing not only the ways we configure and use software and file storage but also how we conceptualize those functions globally in huge numbers we are growing accustomed to a model of browserbased software that is device independent while some challenges still remain specifically with notions of privacy and sovereignty the promise of significant cost savings is an important driver in the search for solutions 3 the world of work is increasingly collaborative driving changes in the way student projects are structured because employers value collaboration as a critical skill silos both in the workplace and at school are being abandoned in favor of collective intelligence to facilitate more teamwork and group communication projects rely on tools such as wikis google docs skype and easily shared file-storage sites including dropbox students are increasingly evaluated not just on the overall outcome but also on the success of the group dynamic such sites preserve the process and the multiple perspectives that lead to the end results 4 the abundance of resources and relationships made easily accessible via the internet is increasingly challenging us to revisit our roles as educators 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 are paramount mentoring and preparing students forth world in which they will live and work is again at the forefront universities have always been seen as the gold standard for educational credentialing but emerging certification programs from other sources are eroding the value of that mission daily 5 education paradigms are shifting to include online learning hybrid learning and collaborative models budget cuts have forced institutions to re-evaluate their education strategies and find alternatives to the exclusive face-to-face learning models students already spend much of their free time on the internet learning and exchanging new information often via their social networks institutions that embrace face-to face online hybrid learning models have the potential to leverage the online skills learners have already developed independent of academia we are beginning to see developments in online learning that offer different affordances than physical campuses including opportunities for increased collaboration while equipping students with stronger digital skills hybrid models when designed and implemented successfully enable students 4

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to travel to campus for some activities while using the network for others taking advantage of the best of both environments 6.there is a new emphasis in the classroom on more challengebased and active learning challenge-based learning and similar methods foster more active learning experiences both inside and outside the classroom as technologies such as tablets and smartphones now have proven applications in higher education institutions educators are leveraging these tools which students already use to connect the curriculum with real life issues the active learning approaches are decidedly more student-centered allowing them to take control of how they engage with a subject and to brainstorm and implement solutions to pressing local and global problems significant challenges several important challenges are detailed below but it was clear that behind them all was a pervasive sense that individual organizational constraints are likely the most important factors in any decision to adopt or not to adopt a given technology even institutions that are eager to adopt new technologies may be critically constrained by the lack of necessary human resources and the financial wherewithal to realize their ideas still others are located within buildings that simply were not designed to provide the radio frequency transparency that wireless technologies require and thus find themselves shut out of many potential technology options while acknowledging that local barriers to technology adoptions are many and significant the advisory board focused its discussions on challenges that are common to the higher education community as a whole the highest ranked challenges they identified are listed here in the order in which the advisory board ranked them a economic pressures and new models of education are bringing unprecedented competition to the traditional models of higher education across the board institutions are looking for ways to control costs while still providing a high quality of service institutions are challenged by the need to support a steady or growing number of students with fewer resources and staff than before as a result creative institutions are developing new models to serve students such as streaming introductory courses over the network as these pressures continue other models may emerge that diverge from traditional ones simply capitalizing on new technology however is not enough the new models must use these tools and services to engage students on a deeper level 5

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b appropriate metrics of evaluation lag the emergence of new scholarly forms of authoring publishing and researching traditional approaches to scholarly evaluation such as citation-based metrics are often hard to apply to research that is disseminated or conducted via social media new forms of peer review and approval such as reader ratings inclusion in and mention by influential blogs tagging incoming links and re-tweeting are arising from the natural actions of the global community of educators with increasingly relevant and interesting results c digital media literacy continues its rise in importance as a key skill in every discipline and profession despite the widespread agreement on the importance of digital media literacy training in the supporting skills and techniques is rare in teacher education and non-existent in the preparation of most university faculty as lecturers and professors begin to realize that they are limiting their students by not helping them to develop and use digital media literacy skills across the curriculum the lack of formal training is being offset through professional development or informal learning but we are far from seeing digital media literacy as an expected norm for academic professionals nor as a key part of degree programs d institutional barriers present formidable challenges to moving forward in a constructive way with emerging technologies too often it is education s own processes and practices that limit broader uptake of new technologies much resistance to change is simply comfort with the status quo but in other cases such as in promotion and tenure reviews experimentation with or adoptions of clearly innovative applications of technologies is often seen as outside the role of researcher or scientist e new modes of scholarship are presenting significant challenges for libraries and university collections how scholarship is documented and the business models to support these activities while the university library has traditionally housed collections of scholarly resources social networks and new publishing paradigms such as open content are challenging the library s role as curator students and educators are increasingly able to access important historic research in web browsers on devices of their choosing as such libraries are under tremendous pressure to evolve new ways of supporting and curating scholarship these trends and challenges are a reflection of the impact of technology that is occurring in almost every aspect of our lives 6

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technologies to watch the six technologies featured in the nmc horizon report are placed along three adoption horizons that indicate likely timeframes for their entrance into mainstream use for teaching learning and creative inquiry each of the six is already the target of work at a number of innovative organizations around the world and the projects we showcase here reveal the promise of a wider impact near-term horizon on the near-term horizon are mobile apps and tablets these two topics have become pervasive in everyday life at least in the developed world and students at universities and colleges have ever-increasing expectations of being able to learn on these devices whenever and wherever they may be this year tablets have been separated from mobiles as a distinct category preserving mobiles as a descriptor used for typical hand-held devices designed to make calls mobile apps are the fastest growing dimension of the mobile space in higher education right now with impacts on virtually every aspect of informal life and increasingly every discipline in the university always-connected internet devices using 3gand similar cellular networks imbedded sensors cameras and gps have proved to be a feature set with hundreds of thousands of applications apps that take advantage of recent developments in these tools along with advances in electronic publishing and the convergence of search technology and location awareness made this category of software enormously interesting in a higher education context higher education institutions are now designing apps tailored to educational and research needs across the curriculum tablet computing presents new opportunities to enhance learning experiences in ways simply not possible with other devices high-resolution screens allow users of tablets such as the ipad to easily share content with each other and pore over images and videos on the screen as people tend to use tablets to supplement and not replace smartphones they are viewed as less disruptive tools no phone ringing and no incoming text messages which makes them ideal tools for learning opportunities because tablets are able to tap into all the advantages that mobile apps bring to smaller devices but in a larger format higher education institutions are seeing them not just as an affordable solution for one-to-one learning but also as a feature-rich tool for field and lab work often times replacing far more expensive and cumbersome devices and equipment 7

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mid-term horizon the second adoption horizon is where we will begin to see widespread adoptions of two technologies that are experiencing growing interest within higher education game-based learning and learning analytics educational gaming brings an increasingly credible promise to make learning experiences more engaging for students while at the same time improving important skills such as collaboration creativity and critical thinking game-based learning games for education span the range from single-player or small-group card and board games all the way to massively multiplayer online games and alternate reality games those at the first end of the spectrum are easy to integrate into the curriculum and have long been an option in many higher education institutions but the greatest potential of games for learning lies in their ability to foster collaboration and engage students deeply in the process of learning once educational gaming providers can match the volume and quality of their consumer-driven counterparts games will garner more attention learning analytics loosely joins a variety of data gathering tools and analytic techniques to study student engagement performance and progress in practice with the goal of using what is learned to revise curricula teaching and assessment in real time building on the kinds of information generated by google analytics and other similar tools learning analytics aims to mobilize the power of data-mining tools in the service of learning and embrace the complexity diversity and abundance of information that dynamic learning environments can generate far-term horizon on the far-term horizon are gesture-based computing and the internet of things gesture-based technology has enabled students to learn by doing interfaces that react to touch movement voice and facial expression allow more freedom in how we interact with our devices the internet of things a notion first outlined by vint cerf as one of the many reasons to move to ipv6 to expand the address space of the internet is converging with smart objects and fueling considerable innovation in how these devices communicate with each other and with us smart objects are already well established in the commercial sector and range along a continuum from rfid sensors to near field communication nfc these technology topics do not yet have an abundance of well-documented project examples in higher education but the high level of interest found in both areas indicates that they are worth following closely 8

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gesture-based computing moves the control of computers from a mouse and keyboard to the motions of the body facial expressions and voice recognition via new input devices it makes interactions with computational devices far more intuitive and embodied from the touchscreens on smartphones to the gesture and voice interpretation of the latest gaming systems xbox kinect and nintendo wii and virtual assistants gesture-based computing enables users to learn by doing and facilitates the convergence of a user s thoughts with their movements large multi-touch displays support collaborative work allowing multiple users to interact with content simultaneously the internet of things is the latest turn in the evolution of smart objects and then communicate the status of that information on demand whether optically or via electromagnetic frequencies with the advent of the new internet protocol version six those objects can now have an ip address enabling their information store to be accessed in the same way a webcam might be allowing real-time access to that information from anywhere at the same time new wireless communication strategies such as near field communication are making it easier for smart objects to connect to networks the implications are not yet clear but it is evident that hundreds of billions of devices from delicate lab equipment to refrigerators to next-generation home security systems will soon be designed to take advantage of such connections the nmc horizon project this report is part of a longitudinal research study of emerging technologies that began in march 2002 since that time under the banner of the horizon project the nmc and its research partners have held an ongoing series of conversations and dialogs with its advisory boards now more than 450 technology professionals campus technologists faculty leaders from colleges and universities museum professionals teachers and other school professionals and representatives of leading corporations from more than thirty countries for more than a decade these conversations have been mined to provide the insights on emerging technology that are published annually in the nmc horizon report series mobile apps there is a revolution that is taking place in software development that parallels the changes in recent years in the music publishing and retail industries the apps consist in low cost software extensions to devices like smartphones including iphone and android mobile apps are small simple and elegant they generally do one thing or a small list of tightly related things extraordinarily well apple and google have developed extensive collections of apps and adding to your set is as simple as it is inexpensive the best apps are tightly 9

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integrated with the capabilities of the device itself using location data motion detection gestures access to social networks and web search to seamlessly create a full-featured experience the mobile app marketplace reflects an expanding world of resources that fits into the palm of a hand the higher education sector is beginning to capitalize on this by integrating mobile apps into the curriculum and designing their own to encompass course materials and campus maps the institution has beendeveloping apps to extend learning outside of theclassroom and documenting the results along the wayin an annual mobile learning study.as institutions begin to understand the potential ofapps they have built in features for students to checktheir grades or to update them with sports scores orbreaking campus news as mobile apps become an important fixture in thebusiness world many universities and colleges havedeployed special courses and programs to teachstudent entrepreneurs how to design develop andmarket them tablet computing advances in tablet computers havecaptured the imagination of educators around theworld.in the process tablets have come to be viewedas not just a new category of mobile devices butindeed a new technology in its own right connected internet,and thousands of apps with which to personalizethe experience withsignificantly larger screens and richer gestured-basedinterfaces than their smartphone predecessors theyare ideal tools for sharing content videos images,and presentations because they are easy for anyoneto use visually compelling and highly portable immensely portable tablets are already a significantdistribution element for magazines and e-books the design choice without the traditional keyboard and all the characteristics like full range of mobile appsin a slim lightweight portable package that fits ina purse or briefcase and theimplications it brings for interacting with the device is akey reason that tablets are not a new kind of lightweightlaptop but rather a completely new computing device because of their portability large display andtouchscreen tablets are ideal devices for one to onelearning as well as fieldwork many institutions arebeginning to rely on them in place of cumbersomelaboratory equipment video equipment and variousother expensive tools that are not nearly as portable oras inexpensive to replace more and more institutions are providing their students with ipad devices that come pre-loaded with coursematerials digital textbooks and other helpful 10

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resources higher educationinstitutions are just beginning to delve into moreresearch surrounding some of the many potential usesof tablets including the replacement of print textbookswith e-books the wide use of specialized apps and theexpanded use of the devices built in sensors gps,gesture interface cameras video and audio tools andmore what makes tablets so powerful is thatstudents already use these or very similar devicesoutside the classroom to download apps connectto their social networks and immerse themselves ininformal learning experiences as such students arealready quite comfortable using them in both academicand social settings game based learning developers and researchersare working in every area of game based learning including games that are goal oriented social gameenvironments non-digital games that are easy to construct and play games developed expressly for education and commercial games that lend themselvesto refining team and group skills role-playing,collaborative problem solving and other forms ofsimulated experiences are recognized for having broadapplicability across a wide range of disciplines early studies of consumer games helped to identify theaspects of games that make them especially engagingand appealing to players of various ages and of bothgenders the feeling of working toward a goal thepossibility of attaining spectacular successes the abilityto problem solve collaborate with others and socialize,an interesting story line and other characteristics thesequalities are replicable for educational content thoughthey can be difficult to design well this challenge isone reason why game-based learning continues to beplaced on the mid-term horizon game-based learning reflects a number of importantskills higher education institutions strive for theirstudents to acquire collaboration problem solving,communication critical thinking and digital literacy these games lend themselves tocurricular content requiring students to discover andconstruct knowledge in order to solve problems theyare challenging to design well but the results can betransformative learning analytics learning analytics refers to the interpretation ofa wide range of data produced by and gatheredon behalf of students in order to assess academicprogress predict future performance and spotpotential issues 11

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the goal of learning analytics is to enableteachers and schools to tailor educational opportunitiesto each student s level of need and ability in close-torealtime learning analytics promises to harness thepower of advances in data mining interpretation,and modeling to improve understandings of teachingand learning and to tailor education to individualstudents more effectively learning analytics is about analyzing thewealth of information about students in a way thatwould allow schools to make informed adjustmentsto a student s learning experience drawing on newways of observing patterns in complex data prospects for learning analytics tools include commercialapplications designed for other purposes that might beadapted to support a learning analytics use case andthose developed specifically to accomplish learninganalytics tasks gesture-based computing it is already common to interact with a new classof devices entirely by using natural movementsand gestures the microsoft surface apple sios devices ipad iphone and ipod touch andother gesture-based systems accept input in theform of taps swipes and other ways of touching the idea thatsimple gestures and natural comfortable motionscan be used to control computers is opening the wayto a host of input devices that look and feel verydifferent from the keyboard and mouse and thatare increasingly enabling our devices to infer meaningfrom the movements and gestures we make gesture-based computing is changing the ways thatwe interact with computers both physically andmechanically.it is clear that gesture-based computing has found anatural home in gaming and in mobile devices but itspotential uses are broader the idea of being able to have a completely naturalinteraction with your device is not new but neither hasits full potential been realized recent advances acrossthe board in the underlying technologies along withstrong interest in the consumer electronics segment,bode well for this category of technologies to continueto see new and compelling developments internet of things the internet of things has become a sort ofshorthand for network-aware smart objectsthat connect the physical world with the worldof information.the internet of things wouldallow easy access to these data 12

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the internet of things a concept advanced by ip cocreatorvint cerf is the next step in the evolution ofsmart objects interconnected items in which the linebetween the physical object and digital informationabout it is blurred the advantages of smart grid technologies in efficientlymanaging energy resources are an obvious benefit toany organization and similar remote monitoring andcontrol via the internet is already finding its way intolaboratories where such sharing of expensive resourceshas long been a part of how institutions collaborate smart objects will allow a similar approach to be appliedto all sorts of materials and delicate artifacts the devicesrequired to do so are small do not require batteries orexternal power can communicate wirelessly and areinexpensive they can be attached to any object verydiscretely and then used to track monitor maintain,and keep records about the object in the classroom ip-addressable projectors can alreadystream the slides or videos professors are sharing sothat students who could not physically attend classcan view the presentations and lecture materials fromwherever they are methodology the process used to research and create the nmchorizon report 2012 higher education edition isvery much rooted in the methods used across allthe research conducted within the nmc horizonproject this process takes place online where it is capturedand placed in the nmc horizon project wiki the wiki isintended to be a completely transparent window ontothe work of the project and contains the entire recordof the research for each of the various editions.the section of the wiki used for the nmc horizon report:2012 higher education edition can be found at horizon.wiki.nmc.org following the review of the literature the advisoryboard engages in the central focus of the research the research questions that are at the core of the nmchorizon project these questions were designed to elicita comprehensive listing of interesting technologies,challenges and trends from the advisory board 1 which of the key technologies catalogued inthe nmc horizon project listing will be mostimportant to teaching learning or creative inquirywithin the next five years 2 what key technologies are missing from our list 13

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what would you list among the establishedtechnologies that some educational institutionsare using today that arguably all institutionsshould be using broadly to support or enhanceteaching learning or creative inquiry what technologies that have a solid user basein consumer entertainment or other industriesshould educational institutions be activelylooking for ways to apply what are the key emerging technologies you seedeveloping to the point that learning-focusedinstitutions should begin to take notice duringthe next four to five years 3 what trends do you expect to have a significantimpact on the ways in which learning-focusedinstitutions approach our core missions of teaching,research and service 4 what do you see as the key challenges relatedto teaching learning or creative inquiry thatlearning-focused institutions will face during thenext five years one of the advisory board s most important tasks is toanswer these questions as systematically and broadlyas possible so as to ensure that the range of relevant topics is considered.once this work is done a processthat moves quickly over just a few days the advisoryboard moves to a unique consensus-building processbased on an iterative delphi-based methodology for additional detail on the project methodology or toreview the actual instrumentation the ranking and theinterim products behind the report you can find all information that you need in this webpagehorizon.wiki.nmc.org 14

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