EDUCAUSE, NLII, and NMC Announce Teaching and Learning Alliance

The National Learning Infrastructure Initiative (NLII), the leading-edge teaching and learning program of EDUCAUSE, and the New Media Consortium (NMC) announced a new collaboration at the NMC Summer Conference in Vancouver, Canada, on June 18, 2004. The NLII and the NMC unveiled plans for a two-tiered strategy to discover, identify, and assess new and emerging technologies for higher education.

The NLII joins prominent thought leaders on the NMC’s Horizon Project Advisory Board to help identify new technologies that support teaching and learning. The NMC has expertise in identifying potentially valuable emerging technologies; the NLII has expertise in aligning technology use with learning principles and practices. Together, NMC and the NLII will ensure that the technologies selected for investigation are relevant for academic reasons, not just for their technological potential. Concurrently, the NLII is establishing the Horizon Project Virtual Community of Practice (VCOP) to assess the impact of new and emerging technologies on teaching and learning in the academy.

According to Diana Oblinger, EDUCAUSE vice president and leader of the NLII, "Both of our organizations are interested in staying on the leading edge of learning technologies. The NLII's focus on learners and learning principles and practices coupled with the NMC's experience with emerging technologies is bound to result in strong synergies."

Laurence F. Johnson, NMC CEO, called the collaboration "an exciting development for higher education. Both the NLII and the NMC have considerable experience in the exploration of new ideas and technologies for teaching and learning, but each has approached the work from a different perspective. By combining our efforts and resources, we hope to add a breadth and comprehensiveness to these explorations that will allow us to inform the work of practitioners and policy makers in significant new ways."

The Horizon Project Advisory Board—consisting of scientists, thought leaders, and visionaries—is responsible for the discovery and selection of the handful of technologies that will make up the 2005 Horizon Report. The annual Horizon Report seeks to identify and describe emerging technologies likely to have a major impact on teaching, learning, and creative expression within higher education. The 2004 Horizon Report [PDF* 575 KB] highlights six technologies likely to become important to higher education within the next five years.

"Once you have identified promising technologies, you get to the part the NLII is really good at: enabling institutions to create environments that foster positive change," Oblinger said. "Our focus is on learners, learning principles and practices, and learning technologies, not just on the technology. Another strength we bring to the table is the ability to engage the community in this type of dialogue."

The Horizon Project VCOP joins several other NLII VCOP initiatives and will serve as the place for community members to identify and evaluate promising emerging educational technologies relevant to their institutions. The Horizon Project VCOP will assess the six technologies listed in the NMC 2004 Horizon Report for their fit within a deeper learning principles framework. The VCOP will also build on themes identified by board of the 2005 Horizon Report as well as resources identified by the community and will work in parallel with the Horizon Advisory Board.

About EDUCAUSE

EDUCAUSE is a nonprofit association whose mission is to advance higher education by promoting the intelligent use of information technology. The current membership comprises more than 2,200 colleges, universities, and educational organizations, including 250 corporations, with 17,000 active members. Learn more about EDUCAUSE at www.educause.edu.

About The National Learning Infrastructure Initiative (NLII)

The National Learning Infrastructure Initiative (NLII) is a community that works together to stay on the leading edge of teaching and learning with technology through perspectives on learners, learning principles and practices, and learning technologies. The NLII is designed to be strategic, engaged, and synergistic and is distinctive in that members are actively engaged in the work of the organization. Learn more about NLII at www.educause.edu/nlii/ .

About NMC

The New Media Consortium (NMC) is an international 501(c)3 not-for-profit consortium of nearly 200 leading colleges, universities, and museums dedicated to the exploration and use of new media and new technologies. NMC member institutions are found in almost every state in the US, across Canada, and in Europe, Latin America, and Japan. Among the membership are many of the most highly regarded institutions in North America, as well as the country’s leading state research universities, the nation’s most outstanding community colleges, and a growing list of innovative museums.

The consortium serves as a catalyst for the development of new applications of technology to support learning and creative expression, and sponsors programs and activities designed to stimulate innovation, encourage collaboration, and recognize excellence among its member institutions. Through its many projects, its comprehensive web site, and its series of international conferences the NMC stimulates dialog and understanding through the exploration of promising ideas, technologies, and applications.

For more information on the NMC, see its web site at www.nmc.org.