NMC Horizon Report 2012

The NMC (New Media Consortium) Horizon Report 2012, produced in collaboration with EDUCAUSE, identifies emerging technologies that are likely to have a large impact on education over the next five years. The technologies identified reflect key trends in contemporary society and how these trends affect teaching, learning and creative inquiry in higher education.
These trends were ranked according to how significant an impact they will make on higher education within the next five years:

1. People expect to be able to work, learn, and study whenever and wherever they want to.
2. The technologies we use are increasingly cloud-based, and our notions of IT support are decentralized.
3. The world of work is increasingly collaborative deriving changes in the way student projects are structured.
4.  The abundance of resources and relationships made easily accessible via the Internet is increasingly challenging us to revisit our roles as educators.
5.  Education paradigms are shifting to include online learning, hybrid learning and collaborative models.
6. The new emphasis in the classroom on more challenged- based and active learning.

These trends are considered to be the key drivers of educational technologies through 2017. The six technologies are placed along three adoption horizons that indicate likely timeframes into mainstream use for teaching and learning:

Near-term Horizon: One Year or Less
• Mobile Apps
• Tablets

Mid-term Horizon: Two to Three Years
• Game-Based Learning
• Learning Analytics

Far-term Horizon: Four to Five Years
• Gesture-Based Computing
• Internet of Things



NMC Horizon Report > 2012 Higher Ed Edition