You’ve heard of product design, graphic design, fashion design, architecture, etc, but Experience Design is the invisible frontier of human engagement.  As mobile technologies continue to get smaller and more capable, they are beginning to disappear from our physical awareness without letting go of our attention – in fact, they are cleverly meshing our physical and digital worlds into an integrated and augmented attention that can be interwoven with ‘stories’ to enhance our purpose, presence, sociability, etc.

Opportunity Statement

Experience Design is what mobile technologies were born to enable.  We have lived so long with the monolithic linear narratives that were the best experiences our other media have been able to deliver, that the opportunity of authoring open, social, synchronous, real-world narratives is unliteral and unnatural for us.  Welcome to the new natural, if you’re bold enough to author it.  The opportunities for learning are breathtaking.

Prediction Source(s)

WIRED – Design & The Digital World

Social media is far more than Facebook.  You don’t have to look deeper than Pinterest and Evernote to see valuable potential for the classroom environment.  Every classroom is inherently a social space, so Social Media in the Classroom is an inevitable and substantial part of the future of education.

Opportunity Statement

The breadth & penetration of social media into every individual’s life has made it essential to multiple frontiers of informal learning; the evolution to formal learning has begun.

Prediction Source(s)

Online Colleges – Tech Trends for 2013

Educause – 7 Things About Social Content Curation

A Makerspace is a physical location where people gather to share resources and knowledge, work on projects, network, and build.  Makerspaces provide tools and working room in a community environment—a library, community center, private organization, or campus. Many are primarily used for technological experimentation, hardware development, and idea prototyping, but increasingly, self-directed individual inventors and creative teams are using makerspaces to build projects in fields other than engineering and technology. Makerspaces are zones of self-directed learning, providing a physical laboratory for inquiry-based learning and validating the drive for discovery that defines the researcher and the scholar.

Opportunity Statement

Digital, physical & blended Makerspaces offer a playful, purposeful alternative to traditional self-guided and collaborative learning environments.  Are they the next generation of the classroom, or will they also transform informal learning markets such as community centres, science museums & children’s museums?

Prediction Source(s)

Educause – Makerspaces

Higher education is entering a new, evolutionary phase defined by connections between everything and everyone. Connected learning is rooted in the active participation of students, instructors, advisors, and collaborators, offering the ability to connect courses, people, and resources to develop unique personalized learning pathways. This vision of education is of particular interest to those concerned with learner success and the growing role that collaboration plays in all facets of higher education. Connected learning will reshape both business and learning models in higher education, requiring not just the acquisition of knowledge but also an understanding of how to use connections to find answers, seek out mentors and experts, investigate procedures, experiment with possibilities, and develop competencies.

Opportunity Statement

Connected Learning is the intended realization of  the theory of Connectivism.   Can it be feasibly implemented in the classroom or is it part of the fragmentation of the traditional classroom and school?

Prediction Source(s)

Educause – Connected Learning

An API is an Application Programming Interface, essentially a structured way for machines to talk with each other.  The Tin Can API (sometimes known as the Experience API) is an emerging interface for learning technology that makes it possible to collect data about the wide range of experiences a person has (online and offline). This API captures data in a consistent format about a person or group’s activities from many technologies. Very different systems are able to securely communicate by capturing and sharing this stream of activities using Tin Can’s simple vocabulary.

Opportunity Statement

The basic idea is that people don’t learn at a single place or time, or on a single device, so how can we seamlessly support learning however it happens for them?  The Tin Can API is an attempt to enable this transparent learning conversation to happen.  If it catches on it will have transformative implications for every dimension of education.

Prediction Source(s)

BLP Mobile Learning Trends 2012

An Intelligent Tutoring System is computer software designed to simulate a human tutor’s behavior and guidance. Because these systems are able to interpret complex student responses and can learn as they operate, they are able to discern where and why a student’s understanding has gone astray and to offer hints to help the student understand the material at hand. Intelligent tutors provide many of the benefits of a human tutor to very large numbers of students. Intelligent tutoring systems can also provide real-time data to instructors and developers looking to refine teaching methods.

Opportunity Statement

Is an ITS the first salvo of the campaign toward software teachers in the classroom, or is it the ultimate teacher’s aide?

Prediction Source(s)

Educause – Intelligent Tutoring Systems

As brilliant as most software and apps might seem, they are still severely awareness-disabled, meaning they don’t know and can’t respond to simple user contexts such as who I am, where I am, what grade I’m in, what class this is, what level I’ve achieved, what my learning style is, etc.  The  objective of Adaptive Software is that  discrete levels of context awareness allows it to respond constructively to arising learning situations.

Opportunity Statement

While Artificial Intelligence (AI) remains futuristic, Adaptive Software requires far more basic response capabilities that are possible now.  For example, context-awareness is critical for emerging mobile apps.  The venture opportunity is for application developers and instructional designers to develop accountability-driven pedagogical models focused on the learning experience.

Prediction Source(s)

Gartner – Contextual User Experience

KQED – Adaptive Software

Tablets and related devices have redefined publishing, including textbooks.  No longer is textbook content necessarily closed, static and non-interactive.  The growing expectation of both teachers and students is that Digital Textbooks must deliver a rich, engaging, responsive journey – a thrilling new kind of learning experience.

Opportunity Statement

Digital Textbooks offer a range of highly-creative and significantly disruptive product and service opportunities for publishers, authors, media creators, content aggregators, subject-matter experts, education providers, and tutors.

Prediction Source(s)

Educause – Digital Textbooks

Online Colleges – Tech Trends for 2013

Human interaction with information on the Internet, including consumption, creation and distribution, generates data with value that can be mined.  Social media analytics, for example, is a red-hot market as organizations of all kinds seek to understand rapidly-emerging trends.  Learning Analytics applies similar data-mining techniques to create value for learners, teachers, parents, and education systems.

Opportunity Statement

Traditional top-down approaches to Learning Analytics focus on evaluating the performance of learners, teachers and/or education systems.  However, more disruptive strategies look at how learners, teachers and education systems can each harness data appropriate to improving their own performance.  There are also learning-specific opportunities related to broader data-mining and analytics markets with respect to sensors, acquisition, participation models, privacy, security, and brokerage.

Prediction Source(s) 

Educause – Learning Analytics

Gartner – Next-Generation Analytics

Educause – Top 10 IT Issues 2013

Gartner – Top 10 Technology Trends 2013

NMC Horizon Report 2013

A Massively Open Online Course (MOOC) is an emerging model for interactive online learning experiences designed to accommodate possibly unlimited numbers of learners who potentially arrive, attend, participate, and leave on their own terms.   MOOCs can take advantage of existing social media and gaming environments as platforms to host both formal and informal learning experiences.

Opportunity Statement

MOOCs are primarily a ‘mash up’ opportunity domain, where new ventures will orchestrate trends, tools, and applications to serve audiences and their learning demands in creative, accessible and typically non-traditional ways.   There are exciting opportunities for disruptively new ventures, and for existing ventures to pioneer new markets.

Prediction Source(s)

Educause – MOOCS

Educause – MOOCS II

Educause – Top 10 IT Issues 2013

Online Colleges – Tech Trends for 2013

NMC Horizon Report 2013

Game-Based Learning seeks to apply the technologies and engagement factors of the hyper-successful electronic games sector, and of games more generally, to create effective learning experiences.  This includes everything from the creation of original games with learning outcomes embedded in the gameplay (“serious games”) to the game-like animation (“gamification”) of more traditional learning approaches .

Opportunity Statement

Venture opportunities in Game-Based Learning are available to publishers, game designers, instructional designers, inventors, educators, etc, with practically no age or subject restrictions.   The rapid diversification of gaming platforms (e.g. Wii, Kinect, tablet, mobile, etc,) is expanding the opportunity domain.

Prediction Source(s)

Educause – Gamification

Online Colleges – Tech Trends for 2013

NMC Horizon Report 2013

Employing essentially limitless web-based storage and services (the “cloud”) to enhance the learning experience, Cloud Learning has the potential to provide unprecedented accessibility, continuity, extensibility and integration.  Most analysts believe that humanity’s move from computers to the cloud will be more transformational than our recent move from paper to computers.

Opportunity Statement

While it may seem that most venture opportunities in Cloud Learning are restricted to medium to large organizations,  there are actually innumerable opportunities for individuals and smaller organizations to apply emerging cloud-based services and tools in innovative ways across all learning domains.  A particularly interesting component of this topic is the emergence of “personal clouds”.

Prediction Source(s) 

Educause – Files in the Cloud

Educause – Top 10 IT Issues 2013

Gartner – Top 10 Technology Trends 2013

Online Colleges – Tech Trends for 2013

While tablet and smart phone manufacturers are churning forward at a breakneck pace, making a fortune on humanity’s device-lust, the compelling back-story is what these devices can do – the proliferation of Apps.   And while addiction and burn-out on the distracting nature of most apps is already big news, there is also a rapid emergence of meaningful, productive and educational apps.  The app-world as a resource for learning is huge.

Opportunity Statement

It may seem like the design of successful Apps is pure chance, and less likely than the lottery.   However, as app-capable devices permeate learning environments the opportunity arises to design apps that are deliberated coupled in effective ways with every dimension of the learning experience.

Prediction Source(s) 

Educause – iPad Apps

Gartner – Media Tablets and Beyond

Gartner – Mobile-Centric Applications

Gartner – App Stores

Gartner – Top 10 Technology Trends 2013

Companies like IBM are building “Smart Cities” based on distributed sensors in roads, pipe, etc, providing feedback to control systems.  This is part of a general emerging market called the Internet of Things (IoT) where heretofore inanimate, mute objects are becoming part of an intelligent, active, behind-the-scenes conversation.  So what about “Smart Schools”, where the all of the tools, resources, furniture and infrastructure of a school get involved in the learning conversation?

Opportunity Statement

While relatively few physical objects might seem like immediate candidates to be given a useful IoT voice, currently wired systems including learning software and hardware are waiting to be heard.  Enabling and collecting those voices, and organizing the conversation, presents a set of opportunities in classroom management, school management, security, etc.

Prediction Source(s)

Gartner – The Internet of Things

Gartner – Top 10 Technology Trends 2013

Most people prefer to tackle the majority of their continuing learning objectives independently or informally in professional groups, as Self-Guided Learning.  Additionally, the availability and affordability of qualified teachers and accessible learning environments can’t nearly meet the global demand for higher and better educational opportunities.

Opportunity Statement

Venture opportunities exist in a vibrant global marketplace to offer self-guided and self-paced learning solutions in multiple languages and cultures across professional, academic and vocational fields.  Specific Self-Guided Learning opportunities include content, curriculum, programs, tools, aggregators, automated tutors, evaluation, and accreditation-preparation.

Prediction Source(s):  

Ambient – Self-Paced Learning

New Scientist – AI Graders

The learning commons, sometimes called an “information commons,” has evolved from a combination library and computer lab into a full-service learning, research, and project space. As a place where students can meet, talk, study, and use “borrowed” equipment, the Modern Learning Commons brings together the functions of libraries, labs, lounges, and seminar areas in a single community gathering place.

Opportunity Statement

Venture opportunities related to Modern Learning Commons focus on products and services that support schools, education systems, adult learning programs and corporate learning environments to flexibly integrate tools and content that serve their audiences learning objectives.

Prediction Source(s):  

Educause 7 Things

The Visual-Intensive Learning (VIL) marketplace recognizes the rapid trend away from text-intensive information environments to visually-dominated web experiences that is apparent on most web sites but is championed most specifically by sites such as YouTube and Pinterest, as well as immersive collaborative environments and games.  The concept of a “visual learner” is not new, but the streaming, collaborative and social capacity for visual interaction and exploration is blossoming rapidly.  VIL is also the most significant dynamic of tablet and smartphone devices, simply for their lack of screen real estate.

Opportunity Statement

Venture opportunities related to Visual-Intensive Learning surround the strategic application and extension of existing tools into existing and new learning environments, as well as the development of custom tools that leverage the trending visual dominance of the web experience for learning.

Prediction Source(s):  

Gartner – 2011 Top Tech Trends

In the corporate sector IT managers are trying to cope with the ‘impossible’ situation that workers are insisting on coming to work, and doing their work, with their own mobile and work devices and preferred software (Bring Your Own Device or Bring Your Own Technology (BYOT), creating (for the managers, they say) a tsunami of technology management, security, etc, problems.  For the workers, they simply know they are more productive and happy using their own devices.  The same trend is already dominant in post-secondary and will inevitably prevail in K-12 as devices become more ubiquitous, economical, robust and personalized.

Opportunity Statement

There’s no question that BYOT will ultimately be cheaper and more efficient for both formal and informal education providers, so this transition creates a set of venture opportunities surrounding the content, infrastructure and management of the provision of learning.

Prediction Source(s):  

KQED – BYOD

Educause – Top 10 IT Issues 2013

Online Colleges – Tech Trends for 2013

A dream of educators forever, Personalized Learning is reaching a tipping point in terms of the technologies available for realistic implementations.  This marketplace opens to data-driven evaluation enabling learning experiences that cater to individual students learning styles and needs.

Opportunity Statement

While the venture prospects for Personalized Learning are awesome in the long term, short- and medium-term opportunities will likely need to be highly strategic, leveraging existing platforms, targeting specific audiences, and delivering focused, accountable results.

Prediction Source(s):  

ZDnet – 2011 Top Learning Technologies 

The backbone of Digital Identity is the ability to employ a single, private, secure identity system as the key to enter any number of applications and environments you might have access to.  In broader strokes however, especially in education, it can encompasses the ownership (by the learner) of the learning experience and the authority to broker the data, transcripts, credentials, etc, arising from that experience.

Opportunity Statement

As every individual’s learning experience is increasingly digital, bridging across formal and informal activities hosted by multiple institutions and organizations, Digital Identity venture opportunities arise for products and services which support the individual’s objectives as well as help them to seamlessly negotiate those objectives with external organizations and stakeholders.

Prediction Source(s)

NMC – 2012 K-12 Horizon Report

Young minds crave more stimulation & response than most parents, caregivers, siblings & peers can ever offer.   Parents everywhere are already entertaining even very young children with smartphone & tablet apps, and it is obvious how engaged the kids are.    How young is too young?   How much is too much?  Do we even know sufficiently about how learning happens in early childhood to author software to support it?

Opportunity Statement

Companies  marketing progressive learning into early childhood using tablets, etc, already exist, but we’re close to a tipping point of size, cost, safety, performance, interface, etc, that will transform the current focus on distraction into one of accountable development and accelerated learning.  Preschool is about to get some rocket fuel, and this will likely change the trajectory of the entire home-school market.

Prediction Source(s)

Xtreme Labs – Three Technology Trends

An approach to alternative credentials, badges, are digital tokens that appear as icons or logos on a web page or other online venue. Awarded by institutions, organizations, groups, or individuals, badges signify accomplishments such as completion of a project, mastery of a skill, or marks of experience. Learners fulfill the issuer-specific criteria to earn the badge by attending classes, passing an exam or review, or completing other activities, and a grantor verifies that the specifications have been met and awards the badge. Numerous groups, organizations, community projects, and web entities currently issue badges, and they are gaining currency in higher education as well.

Opportunity Statement

Although many details remain for badges to be broadly accepted, they represent a different approach to credentials, one that places the focus on individual students and their learning accomplishments.

Prediction Source(s)

Educause – 7 Things