Future: Shocked

My colleague Nancy Wozniak at Dutchess CC asked some thought provoking questions of the instructional design community lately (check DEOS-L if you want to respond). I thought I'd share my lunatic ravings here; although it might sound somewhat jaundiced, my thoughts were recently shaped by presentations from respectable authorities like Dee Fink and Tara Gray. Read on...

-What do you think is the big challenge distance learning faces in the future?
Only one challenge? There will be several:
-DL will be a commodity experience for users, driven by price point and the perceived value of national and regional accreditation attached to degree programs.
-the younger end of the DL consumer spectrum will be bored by the relatively static nature of current distance learning content, and will challenge developers to truly provide a "user created" learning experience.
-market forces in the economy will drive US business and industry to make specific demands on colleges/universities in terms of graduating students' marketable skill sets. We will see a two tiered approach to higher ed - highly specialized, skills based technology curricula provided by "trade schools", community colleges and 2 year ATC type institutions; and more in-depth, but still highly focused "professional" labelled graduate and undergraduate programs that focus on management and R&D aspects of engineering and science, particularly biotech.


-What do you think the face of education will look like in 2015?
Increasing levels of formal/informal partnerships with business will create niche degree programs and certificates, particularly at the graduate level. Accrediting bodies will place greater emphasis on demonstrating and measuring learning outcomes, forcing higher ed to develop a complex and refined assessment outcomes process (the mother of all e-portfolios). In turn, either highly customized LMS/SIS couplings or "turn key" customizations that integrate data from diverse repositories (within the campus) and provide in-depth data mining capabilities for reporting.

-What technologies in distance learning will be used?
Existing commercial systems and open source systems will provide enriched m-learning (mobile) content, once the industry determines what the "killer app" for mobile users really is. In turn, the platform will drive chunking of instructional content into "micro-lessons" that can be easily processed during commute times, etc. GIS overlays will help you locate "study buddies", small group team members, and off-campus lending libraries. Social networking will define study groups that exist across institutions, confounding administration who continue to combat plagiarism. Greater emphasis on less structured, user controlled experiences will bring us the "loosely coupled LMS", possibiy mixing components from commercial providers with open source apps. The "Google LMS" will allow mash ups of various technologies into a fluid LMS structure, realizing the LAMS vision.

-Do you think the current faculty attitudes towards distance learning will change?
Entering new faculty accept the ubiquity of the LMS, just as they do IM, wikis, and Google. Aging faculty recognize that a continuing secondary income stream will be derived from teaching online, at a distance, and will embrace teaching online as an "exit strategy" into retirement.

-Will we still have the conventional LMS?
Absolutely. Except there will be only one commercial system, owned by Microsoft...or maybe Oracle :-) As ASPs gear up to provide hosted solutions and back end integation to campus SIS systems (watch for SunGuard/SCT as an early entrant, followed closely by ominvores EDS, Accenture, and the like.


-What technologies will we be using for distance learning in 2015?
Perhaps a greater integration with virtual worlds into and out of the LMS, along with the "social operating system" as sketched out by NMC. Otherwise, TCP/IP, HTTP, SMTP/POP3 and RSS continue to be the order of the day. Oh, and don't rule out the return of ITV (instructional television), as broadcast and cable increasingly have access to cost-effective, digitally delivered TV signals to your door. Increased interactivity on the digital set top box could open up a two way channel and return us to an enhanced, digitally crystal clear version of the telecourses of the not too distant past.