pkurkowski's blog

The 2011 Horizon Report, which was released today, spotlights six emerging technologies that are likely to have a significant impact on higher education in the next one to five years, presenting an overview accompanied by examples and suggested readings for each technology. The report is based on research by the New Media Consortium (NMC) and is a collaborative effort of the NMC and ELI. Read the press release for more information.

As the pace of technology change continues unabated, institutions are faced with numerous decisions and choices to support teaching and learning. With many options and constrained budgets, faculty and administrators must make careful decisions about what practices to adopt and about where to invest their time, effort, and financial resources. As critical as these decisions are, the information available about the impact of these innovations is often scarce, scattered, or both.

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 channel for the kind of individual, creative student responses that can alter the character of learning.

ELI has released a new white paper, Privacy Considerations in Cloud-Based Teaching and Learning Environments, by Veronica Diaz (EDUCAUSE), Joann Martyn Golas (DePaul University), and Susan Gautsch (Pepperdine University).