ETEC 522 – May 2012

Trending Technologies

Connie Malamed reviews the learning technology trends of 2012  from a corporate Instructional Designer perspective. She identifies eight trends that are influencing learning design right now. Often predictive trend watching reviews such as the Horizon Report attempt to review learning technologies that may not yet exist in mainstream education. However this post, Learning Technology Trends to Watch in 2012, reviews trends that can be felt and evaluated presently in corporate learning.

Backchannel
The use of Twitter as a presentation backchannel is a growing trend specifically for conferences. Although certainly a trend, I do not feel it is having a real impact in education. The backchannel is a suitable way to engage the audience with the content of a presentation when there are fifty or more audience members. For smaller settings where members can engage in questions and conversations directly, like a typical training room session, a Twitter backchannel makes little sense. I feel this trend is out of place in educational technology.

Content Curation
With the volume of information available nowadays the skill of organizing and appropriately curating that information has become a necessity for instructors and students. Social bookmarking and RSS aggregation tools are currently an integral part of the learning experience. Malamed believes that, “content curation could be the responsibility of the learning architect in many organizations some day.” I feel that it is more likely that this will be the responsibility of educators, and in particular, the students themselves.

Developing in the Cloud

Malamed identifies the cloud as a trend affecting course development. The elearning authorware Lectora, for example, released this year a feature called ReviewLink which hosts a course in development and allows for collaborators to edit and leave comments. It is a simple idea perhaps borrowed from Google Docs but is significantly changing the way group dynamics of the Instructional Design cycle making the project management side much easier.  I think it should also be noted that Cloud tools such as Box, Dropbox, Flickr are also changing how people learn.

Expanded Instructional Designer’s Role
There is an increasing demand for Instructional Designers to understand learning design for formal and informal environments. I believe this trend is largely in control of the organization where the ID is employed. In some cases, IDs will employ social media tools to continue the learning process long after the training session. In others though, IDs will be regulated by hierarchical structures to produce uninspiring templated content. I am hopeful that more organizations will give IDs the flexibility needed to become involved in extending the learning process beyond the classroom

Flipped Learning

It is very positive to see this very old teaching practice become a new conversation in education. Constructivist teachers have for many years assigned reading for homework with the idea that their classroom session will be composed of group projects and discussion. Some teachers did this, and other did not. The Fliipped Classroom idea, popularized by Salman Khan , encourages teachers to assign their or other lectures for homework. Regardless of how easy this practice has become, I feel the same educators that flipped their classroom before, will continue to do so with online digital content.

Gamification
The application of game mechanics to the learning endeavor has for the most part been a struggle. The marriage between gaming and learning content seems to break down somewhere. Developers could learn much from the hugely popular Angry Birds to design leaning games that compel the learners to continue trying to improve. David Kelly’s post What Angy Birds Can Teach Us About Instructional Design suggests how this can be done.

HTML 5 for Mobile
Malamed identifies elearning authoring tools that now publish to HTML 5. This is a major breakthrough in mobile learning as most elearning has traditionally been Flash based and therefore unfriendly to mobile devices. Malamed correctly observes that the HTML 5 migration will need to consider the organization’s supported web browser. At my company for example, Internet Exploerer 6 is the supported browser which in entirely unhelpful for those users interested in viewing HTML 5 content.

New Blended Learning
Malamed describes the Personal Learning Network as  New Blended Learning which is potentially highly confusing. Vocabulary aside, the PLN based learning environment is now a part of  learning design. To cope with this new reality, educators will need to realize that content by itself has very little value. People can turn to YouTube or TED ED anytime for learning content. To bring value, educators will need to focus their attention on questioning, personal feedback, learning context, and encouragement. Instructional Designers and teachers will need to weave through the chaos of online learning content to help students gain a deeper understanding.

The learning technology trends of this post, with the exception of the Backchannel, are all of importance to Instructional Designers in 2012. Understanding these trends will help IDs become more productive and valuable to the learning experience and their organizations.