This short blog post highlights 10 predictions made by various educational technology companies about what the main trends in 2017 are, that as always may or may not come true. These trends are often the ‘concept cars of education’ only a few features will come true in the near future but it’s still exciting to see what the predictions are.
1. More mobile study for students according to McGraw Hill Education
Every year more & more students are finding mobile study tech to be essential in college. https://t.co/ofpAPjaEQn#highered#edtechchatpic.twitter.com/SY4G8mjtIW
— McGrawHill Education (@MHEducation) January 9, 2017
2. Digital Textbook Provision in more Universities and it’s perhaps for this reason that 75% of educators surveyed in Deloitte’s 2016 Digital Education Survey believe that digital learning content will replace the printed textbook within the next 10 years.
3. Personalisation will be critical to attracting students & improving retention in Higher Education in 2017 reports Getting Smart.
4. An ‘always on’ learning experience according to Aruba Networks (a Hewlett Packard Company)
An “always on” learning experience – Higher Education Mobility Trends for 2017 via @ArubaNetworks https://t.co/4uxS2mQlg2 #HigherEd #edtech pic.twitter.com/Fi3AeaWear
— Echo360 (@echo360) December 29, 2016
5. Juan Lopez-Valcarcel, Chief Digital Officer at Pearson gives his predictions on Educational Technology trends in 2017, one highlight is stealth learning (via games like Minecraft)
6. The annual NMC Horizon report’s team are busy working on their report, see what trends they are suggesting, one highlight is the growth of Streaming and On-Demand Services.
7. Education Technology report on their predictions of trends in 2017, one they highlight is Learning Analytics is becoming more actionable
8. Virtual Reality is ” is increasingly becoming a staple of edtech” writes Dr Matthew Lyhch on his website
9. There might be a ‘next generation of digital learning environment‘ at UCL.
10. Your guess is as good as ours…we’d like to read your comments to our round up of predictions.
Emerging themes
The themes to emerge from all these articles and tweets are that, mobile learning will continue to grow and students increasingly use mobiles first when studying. There’s also the idea of gamification, VR, Learning Analytics, Personalisation and the possible re-imaging of the virtual learning environment (now the elder statesman of educational technology to use a metaphor). I think this quote from Professor Diana Laurillard (2008, p1) sums up the predictions of educational technology in an amusing way “Education is on the brink of being transformed through learning technologies; however, it has been on that brink for some decades now”.
References
Laurillard (2008) Digital technologies and their role in achieving our ambitions for education [online] Available from: http://eprints.ioe.ac.uk/628/1/Laurillard2008Digital_technologies.pdf [Accessed: 11th January 2017].
