2008 Horizon Report – Academic Libraries

Ooops – I got fooled. This is last years report. The 2008 report will be released on Jan. 18, 2008. If you want a preview you can look at the Horizon Project Wiki… Cool, So far it looks like they’ll be discussing:
2008 Academic Trends Short List
Time-to-Adoption Horizon: One Year or Less
– Webware
– Collaborative Workspaces
– Simple Video Capture and Sharing
– Community Tagging
Time-to-Adoption Horizon: Two to Three Years– Mobile
– Geotagging
– Socially-Centered Virtual Worlds
– Scholarly Mashups
Time-to-Adoption Horizon: Four to Five Years– Collective Intelligence
– Social Operating Systems
– Open Education Resources
– Alternative Interaction Devices
Key Trends
– Growing use of Web 2.0 and social networking tools is changing our ideas of scholarly contribution and community
– Increasing globalization continues to affect the way we work, collaborate, and communicate
– The notions of collective intelligence and mass amateurization are pushing the boundaries of scholarship
– As the amount and variety of content increases, it is becoming more difficult to filter the noise to find the signal
– Smaller, more powerful devices are offering increased access and portability
– The gap between students’ perception of technology and that of faculty continues to grow
– The environment of higher education continues to change, with a growing trend toward open innovation

Critical Challenges
– Academic review and faculty rewards are increasingly out of sync with new forms of scholarship
– Assessment of new forms of work continues to present a challenge to educators and peer reviewers
– There are significant shifts taking place in scholarship, research, creative expression, and learning, and a need for innovation and leadership at all levels of the academy
– There is a growing need for formal instruction in 21st-century literacies, including information literacy, visual literacy, and technological literacy
– Higher education is facing a growing expectation to deliver services, content and media to mobile and personal devices
– The renewed emphasis on collaborative learning is pushing the educational community to develop new forms of interaction and assessment
Stephen
2007 highlights follow:
The New Media Consortium and EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative have published the 2007 edition of the Horizon Report, the 4th edition. The annual Horizon report is a neat and interesting report that is 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.” This year they cover:
Time-to-Adoption: One Year or Less
User-Created Content
Social Networking
Time-to-Adoption: Two to Three Years
Mobile Phones
Virtual Worlds
Time-to-Adoption: Four to Five Years
The New Scholarship and Emerging Forms of Publication
Massively Multiplayer Educational Gaming
A Half Dozen Key Trends
“As it does each year, the Horizon Advisory Board again reviewed key trends in the practice of teaching, learning, and creativity, and ranked those it considered most important for campuses to watch. Trends were identified through a careful analysis of interviews, articles, papers, and published research. The six trends below emerged as most likely to have a significant impact in education in the next five years. They are presented in priority order as ranked by the Advisory Board.
1. The environment of higher education is changing rapidly. Costs are rising, budgets are shrinking, and the demand for new services is growing. Student enrollments are declining. There is an increasing need for distance education, with pressure coming not only from nontraditional students seeking flexible options, but from administrative directives to cut costs. The “shape” of the average student is changing, too; more students are working and commuting than ever before, and the residential, full-time student is not necessarily the model for today’s typical student. Higher education faces competition from the for-profit educational sector and an increasing demand by students for instant access and interactive experiences.
2 Increasing globalization is changing the way we work, collaborate, and communicate. China, India, and other southeast Asian nations continue to develop skilled researchers and thinkers who contribute significantly to th global body of knowledge and whose work fuels much iinnovation. Additionally, globalization of communication, entertainment, and information iprovides students with wider perspectives and resources than ever before, placing them in a new and continually changing learning space.
3. Information literacy increasingly should not be considered a given. Contrary to the conventional wisdom, the information literacy skills of new students are not improving as the post-1993 Internet boomlet enters college. At the same time, in a sea of user-created content, collaborative work, and instant access to information of varying quality, the skills of critical thinking, research, and evaluation are increasingly required to make sense of the world.
4. Academic review and faculty rewards are increasingly out of sync with new forms of scholarship. The trends toward digital expressions of scholarship and more interdisciplinary and collaborative work continue to move away from the standards of traditional peer-reviewed paper publication. New forms of peer review are emerging, but existing academic practices of specialization and long-honored notions of academic status are persistent barriers to the adoption of new approaches. Given the pace of change, the academy will grow more out of step with how scholarship is actually conducted until constraints imposed by traditional tenure and promotion processes are eased.
5. The notions of collective intelligence and mass amateurization are pushing the boundaries of scholarship. Amateur scholars are weighing in on scholarly debates with reasoned if not always expert opinions, and websites like the Wikipedia have caused the very notion of what an expert is to be reconsidered. Hobbyists and enthusiasts are engaged in data collection and field studies that are making real contributions in a great many fields at the same time that they are encouraging debate on what constitutes scholarly work—and who should be doing it. Still to be resolved is the question of how compatible the consensus sapientum and the wisdom of the academy will be.
6. Students’ views of what is and what is not technology are increasingly different from those of faculty. From small, flexible software tools to ubiquitous portable devices and instant access, students today experience technology very differently than faculty do, and the gap between students’ view of technology and that of faculty is growing rapidly. Mobile phones, to name just one example, are very different tools to students than to faculty; rather than being mere tools for voice communication, these devices store music, movies, and photos, keep students in touch with their friends by text and voice, and provide access to the wider world of the Internet at any time.
As usual there is a lot of depth in this report as it discusses critical challenges facing academic libraries and the key technologies to watch. Further readings are referenced too. Read the full 32 page PDF here.
Stephen