Staying ahead
Cloud computing
Our ability to access services and files from any location and on any device is already driving development of cloud computing applications for consumers and will soon do so for education.
Mobiles
Mobile phones will likely tip into mainstream use in education in the coming year.
The mobile learning infokit explores future trends and guides colleges and universities in best practice in mobile learning.
Tablet computing
There will be a shift away from single purpose devices to multitasking ones such as electronic readers
Northumbria Law School is launching a pilot project this term to explore how iPads can be used in legal education.
Open content
This move reflects a growing shift in the way academics in many parts of the world are seeing education more about the process of learning than the information conveyed in their courses.
Through the Open University making their introductory maths resources available on an open platform, anyone can start improving their mathematics.
Game-based learning
This means using simulated experiences for role-playing and collaborative problem solving across a wide range of disciplines.
Ikariam is a browser-based game simulating life in ancient civilizations, where players learn about economics and social studies by building up the economy and caring for the residents on virtual islands.
Learning analytics
Students generate plenty of data on their way through our colleges and universities – so we're likely to be more interested in analysing that data in order to assess academic progress, predict future performance, and spot potential issues.
JISC is funding work to gather data about students’ use of videoconferences so that the UK Access Grid which runs them can make the meetings even better.
New scholarship
Researchers are increasingly starting to pre-publicise releases of their work, distribute it through non-traditional channels like blogs and Twitter, visualise data and results, and collaborate online as a new way to conduct peer review.
Mendeley is part reference manager and part social network, giving researchers a space to organise their research, collaborate and discover the latest results through a single website.
Semantic applications
These are online tools that use the context of information as well as its content to form relationships between pieces of data.
TrueKnowledge is a UK-founded smart internet search engine that combines natural language analysis with internal and external databases to answer specific questions instantly, rather than redirecting to a list of web pages.
Augmented reality
This overlays virtual information over a live view of the world. For example, when you watch a football game it’s the graphic overlay used to circle a player who has just fouled.
Like a SatNav for historical maps, the Walking Through Time app combines GPS technology with old maps to allow users to scroll through time and navigate places hundreds of years old.
Collective intelligence
This is the knowledge within societies or large groups of individuals. It can be explicit, in the form of knowledge gathered and recorded by many people like Wikipedia, but can also be the knowledge from different activities by different people to gather data
Chemspider is a free chemical structure database giving chemists access to over 26 million structures from hundreds of data sources.
Telepresence
Participants appear to be physically present in one space – but they are actually in another – for example, holding classes in virtual environments.
A leukaemia sufferer stays at home in Moscow and sends a robot to school.
Smart Objects
Any physical object can be turned into a smart object by embedding a unique identifier that can track information about it – like an Oyster card for the London underground or special student card for paying in the canteen as well as entering buildings.
JISC has funded the University of Bath to look into how quick response codes – something like a digital barcode containing a hyperlink – could be used in education – for example during a lecture in which students swipe the code using their phone from a handout and then participate in an online activity.
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Technology Outlook: UK Tertiary Education 2011-2016 (PDF) is the first report in a new series. Co-sponsored by the JISC innovation support centres CETIS and UKOLN, it explores the impact of emerging technologies on UK tertiary education over the next five years, as identified by the Horizon.JISC advisory board of experts.