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Every year I look back to see how well I looked ahead. During my time at eCollege and then Pearson, I wrote a trend piece every January. What shiny new thing might capture people’s eyes or what big, over-arching concept was top of mind for educators.
Looking back, I think I have about a 75-80% success rate. Not that I can brag too much as over those twelve years I likely spoke to or with about a quarter of a million educators, at all levels. My “premonitions” were much more about following the patterns presented to me as problems, opportunities, or simple exuberance.
So, for example, I called the trend of “MOOC fever” at the right time (although who didn’t?). I also noted the heavy push toward Competency Based Education (CBE) seemingly on target. But, when you hear first -hand from the Department of Education that CBE will be a strategic and dedicated push, it’s not hard to predict a soon-to-follow trend.
With that back drop, what is in store for 2015? After all, last year was no different. Even though my family and I moved to Florida so I could take the position of Chief Innovation Officer at Saint Leo University, I still spoke to or with 25,000 people at various levels of education, from K-12 to HE to researchers to vendors to faculty to admins and politicians in 2014. But what did they say?
The ironic (and pleasant) surprise to me was that the conversations seemed….well, less about the shiny and new and more about effectiveness and execution. I heard less about acquisition and more about integration than I ever have before. I heard less about the sky falling and more about bridge building than in past years. I think I might characterize it with a single word: Breathe.
I believe that 2015 will be a year of pausing to finally stitch some things together better, if not correctly. Education has seen a ton of initiatives, experiments, and products / services that will “revolutionize” the industry over decades. Yet no real revolution has taken place. At least not yet.
At the same time, people have seen some fantastic ideas come and go, not because the ideas weren’t solid, but because implementation was bad. Whether it’s politics (internal or external), technology limitations, or even a lack of appropriate experimentation options, some of the great education ideas of our time just languish in anonymity or make their amazing difference for only a handful of students.
Take learning analytics, coming from “big data” warehouses. In the past 5 years, I’ve read and heard the phrase, “I don’t believe in big data” from people in very high places numerous times. Why? Because the promise of data leading to transformative change of education process (be it teaching & learning, enrollment, retention, etc) missed the mark for so long. Systems would not (or could not) speak to one another; owners of data were miserly and protective; analytic engines weren’t nearly as smart as marketed; etc. So, while we are likely finally at a place to cash in on those bets, we have a problem. The problem is that the gamblers went home years ago.
And data is not the only initiative fall short of its promise. In the 35 conferences I attended in 2014, I heard regularly that OER is just too hard to edit, technology doesn’t change classroom quality as it never gets above the “Substitution” level of Puentedura’s SAMR model (or the ‘R’ of the RATL model, etc), MOOCs are more trouble than they are worth, etc.
And so it seems that 2015 might finally be the year to put together, fix, build up, or otherwise empower education with solutions of old. This is not to say new initiatives or products won’t emerge. People will certainly keep working on CBE, breaking the $10,000 Baccalaureate, and it excites me greatly to see both acceptance of and usage for gamification. And groups will keep financing initiatives that play to their strengths too. (Will LinkedIn, Mozilla, and others finally put ‘badging’ into a mainstream, significant conversation in 2015?) But generally speaking, I think 2015 and likely some of 2016 will be a year to reset. Educational institutions have spent a lot on solutions that have not hit the appropriate ROI levels yet. But many still have promise.
Take technology in the classroom up to the “Modification” or “Redefinition” stage of SAMR – now you have something transformative to look at. Want your “rigor” initiative to work for all – consistent professional development may be the answer. How about a meaningful OER solution – perhaps it’s time to bolster some middleware or change the instructional design in the first place. And on and on…
So, don’t be surprised when you start hearing about some amazing “leaps” forward for our industry in the next couple of years. Once the infrastructure is finally right, some of these initiatives will revolutionize… OK, not that strong. They will markedly improve some of the big issues education has been dealing with for a long, long time.
Good luck and good teaching.
Dr. Jeff Borden is Chief Innovation Officer at Saint Leo University.
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