Horizon Report from New Media Consortium and EDUCAUSE Spotlights New Learning Technologies

Today the New Media Consortium (NMC) and the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI) released the 2006 Horizon Report at the ELI annual meeting in San Diego. The annual Horizon Report describes the continuing work of the NMC's Horizon Project, a research-oriented effort that seeks to identify and describe emerging technologies likely to have a large impact on teaching, learning, or creative expression within higher education. The third edition in this annual series, the 2006 Horizon Report is again a collaboration between the New Media Consortium and the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative.

Each year, the report describes six areas of emerging technology that will have significant impact in higher education within three adoption horizons over the next one to five years. “Over the three years the report has been published, technology has taken some interesting turns,” noted Larry Johnson, chief executive officer of the NMC. “Campus leaders like the format of the report and its focus on relevance and examples. Practitioners find it a valuable way to stay in front of the curve.” More than 10,000 copies of last year’s report were distributed in print and electronically; the 2005 report was downloaded more than 7,500 times since its release.

In defining the six selected areas, the project draws on an ongoing discussion among knowledgeable individuals in business, industry, and education, as well as published resources, current research and practice, and the expertise of the NMC community itself. The Horizon Project's Advisory Board probes current trends and challenges in higher education, explores possible topics for the report, and ultimately directs the selection of the final technologies.

According to Diana Oblinger, EDUCAUSE vice president and director of ELI, “One of the reasons the Horizon report is so valuable is that it doesn’t just talk about technology—it talks about how it is used to enhance teaching, learning, and creative expression. Putting the technology in an educational context and providing a number of examples really help people understand why these particular technologies are so exciting.”

To create the 2006 Horizon Report, the 21 members of the 2006 Advisory Board engaged in a comprehensive review and analysis of research, articles, papers, and interviews; discussed existing applications, and brainstormed new ones; and ultimately ranked the items on the list of more than 80 candidate technologies that emerged for their potential relevance to teaching, learning, and creative expression. Most of this work took place online over the fall of 2005 using a variety of social computing tools, notably a special wiki site dedicated to the project.

The 32-page report is free, and has been released with a Creative Commons license to facilitate its use, easy duplication, and broad distribution. A full-color Adobe Acrobat version of the monograph is available at http://www.nmc.org/horizon/.

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 EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI)

The EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI) helps institutions advance learning through IT innovation. ELI is a community that works together to stay on the leading edge of teaching and learning with technology through a focus on learners, interaction and engagement, and learning technologies. ELI brings value to members through exploration, awareness, and enablement. Learn more about ELI at www.educause.edu/eli.

About The New Media Consortium

The New Media Consortium (NMC) is an international consortium of nearly 200 leading colleges, universities, and museums dedicated to the exploration and use of new media and new technologies. 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. Learn more about NMC at www.nmc.org.