7 Things You Should Know About...

The EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative's (ELI's) 7 Things You Should Know About... series provides concise information on emerging learning technologies and related practices. Each brief focuses on a single technology or practice and describes:

What it is
How it works
Where it is going
Why it matters to teaching and learning

Use ELI's 7 Things You Should Know About... briefs to:

Enhance faculty development activities
Open a dialogue with senior administrators about emerging technologies and their implications for your institution
Stay up-to-date on emerging technologies

7 Things You Should Know About...pieces provide quick, no-jargon overviews of emerging technologies and related practices that have demonstrated or may demonstrate positive learning impacts. Any time you need to explain a new learning technology or practice quickly and clearly, look for a 7 Things You Should Know About... brief from ELI.

7 Things Advisory Group

The ELI 7 Things publication is advised by a group consisting of members of the EDUCAUSE community. Our advisors are those with a keen interest both in emerging technologies and in the ways they will play out in teaching and learning. ELI thanks all the members of the 7 Things advisory group.

2012

7 Things You Should Know About Navigating the New Learning Ecosystem (May 2012) The LMS was once the undisputed center of the digital learning ecosystem. But on many campuses, the situation has changed such that the campus online learning environment might be better viewed as a continuum, with the LMS at one end and a student’s own collection of applications, tools, and websites at the other. This proliferation of tools...
7 Things You Should Know About the Evolution of the Textbook (Apr 2012) Tablet devices and the publishing they enable are leading us to reconsider what constitutes a textbook, and they certainly change the landscape of what it has traditionally meant to write and publish one. A new breed of rich-media publishing tools offers an evolving set of opportunities both for the creation process and for the kinds of resources that can...
7 Things You Should Know About Projecting from Mobile Devices (Mar 2012) Emerging technologies allow users to connect to classroom projection systems from mobile devices, including tablets and some smartphones. Such tools can change the character of interaction in the classroom by allowing multiple users to easily access the projector and by enabling projection of mobile-device features such as free-hand...
7 Things You Should Know About Flipped Classrooms (Feb 2012) The flipped classroom is a pedagogical model in which the typical lecture and homework elements of a course are reversed. The notion of a flipped classroom draws on such concepts as active learning, student engagement, hybrid course design, and course podcasting. The value of a flipped class is in the repurposing of class time into a workshop where...
7 Things You Should Know About Challenge-Based Learning (Jan 2012) Challenge-based learning (CBL) is similar to problem-based learning, but with CBL, students formulate the challenges they will address. Through a process of discussion and research, students identify a selection of questions that might be workable for their project, work on solutions, and publish those solutions online. In this...

2011

7 Things You Should Know About First-Generation Learning Analytics (Dec 2011) Learning analytics (LA) applies the model of analytics to the specific goal of improving learning outcomes. LA collects and analyzes the “digital breadcrumbs” that students leave as they interact with various computer systems to look for correlations between those activities and learning outcomes. The type of data gathered varies by...
7 Things You Should Know About MOOCs (Nov 2011) A massively open online course (MOOC) is a model for delivering learning content online to virtually any person—and as many of them—who wants to take the course. Course activities can be scheduled or asynchronous, and a fluid structure is valuable because students can choose their level of participation and many will do so in an à la carte...
7 Things You Should Know About Service Design (Oct 2011) Service design is a process that examines the relationship between those who use a service and the service environment. By focusing on and making improvements to the points at which users interact with other people or the environment, service design enables an organization to run smoothly, provide the best service to its users, and reduce the kind...
7 Things You Should Know About WordPress (Sep 2011) WordPress is an open-source web application that is fundamentally a tool for publishing content, and a broad array of colleges and universities have made use of WordPress and encouraged its use among faculty members, staff, and students. For campus-wide use, IT staff can install a local instance of WordPress with the multisite feature enabled; where institutions...
7 Things You Should Know About Gamification (Aug 2011) Gamification is the application of game elements in non-gaming situations, often to motivate or influence behavior. The rewards or the spirit of competition can spur students’ concentration and interest and lead to more effective learning. The use of gamification is wide-ranging in higher education, from extra-credit awards and in-class team...
7 Things You Should Know About Personalized Digital Magazines (Jul 2011) Applications like Flipboard, Zite, RSS5000, and Taptu aggregate content from personal social media networks and other sources, presenting the information in a snappy magazine-style format complete with headlines, images, column formatting, and multimedia. Users set up sections, like those in a newspaper, and each section provides content from...
7 Things You Should Know About Organizing Files in the Cloud (Jun 2011) File storage and management has become a potentially limiting factor in the usefulness of new technologies, and cloud-based file services such as Dropbox, SugarSync, AeroFS, and Box.net attempt to fill that need. With these services, files are stored “in the cloud,” and each time the user accesses the service, the files are synced with whatever device...
7 Things You Should Know About LMS Evaluation (May 2011) At many institutions, the current LMS is five or more years old. In that time, the teaching and learning context might have changed considerably, and other products, including open-source options, have emerged, raising the question of whether an institution should conduct a complete evaluation of its LMS strategy. The LMS serves as the linchpin of...
7 Things You Should Know About the Modern Learning Commons (Apr 2011) The learning commons, sometimes called an “information commons,” has evolved from a combination library and computer lab into a full-service learning, research, and project space. As a place where students can meet, talk, study, and use “borrowed” equipment, the learning commons brings together the functions of libraries, labs, lounges, and seminar areas in a single...
7 Things You Should Know About Open Textbook Publishing (Mar 2011) The open educational resources model, including textbooks, has emerged as a response to rising text prices, a need for greater access to high-quality learning materials, the proliferation of e-reader devices, and a trend in publishing toward electronic media. Many contend that educational resources should be open and that instructional models increasingly depend on open content....
7 Things You Should Know About iPad Apps for Learning (Feb 2011) Applications designed for the iPad offer interactive content that takes advantage of touch-screen navigation. The iPad combines robust computational functionality with a screen large enough to serve as a legitimate replacement for printed textbooks and other course materials. Where the iPad applications have led, other tablets and their attendant applications can...
7 Things You Should Know About Open-Ended Response Systems (Jan 2011) An open-ended student response system is an electronic service or application that lets students enter text responses during a lecture or class discussion. Open-ended systems give faculty the option of collecting such free-form contributions from students, in addition to asking the true/false or multiple-choice questions that conventional clicker systems allow. Such tools open a...

2010

7 Things You Should Know About Android (Dec 2010) Android is a Linux-based, open-source operating system designed for use on cell phones, e-readers, tablet PCs, and other mobile devices. Android has been selected by many hardware manufacturers to run on a wide range of devices, including cell phones, tablets, e-readers, netbooks, and others. Android may bring smartphone and tablet functionality to a much wider cross-...
7 Things You Should Know About the HyFlex Course Model (Nov 2010) HyFlex is a course design model that presents the components of hybrid learning in a flexible course structure that gives students the option of attending sessions in the classroom, participating online, or doing both. Students can change their mode of attendance weekly or by topic, according to need or preference. Models like HyFlex, which present multiple paths through course...
7 Things You Should Know About Online Media Editing (Oct 2010) As multimedia resources have become increasingly common, everyday users have a need to perform basic manipulations, such as touching up photographs, mixing music, and editing video. A new breed of online tools facilitates these sorts of activities without the cost or complexity of full-scale software editing suites. Online media editing tools are typically free or low-cost, and...