The Horizon Report has been published annually since 2004 by the New Media Consortium (NMC) and the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI) and is known worldwide as one of the most reputable sources of information on new and emerging technologies in higher education.

The following article takes a look at these trends in relation to our work on Incom, where we are designing and building a new kind of university platform.

Massive Open Online Courses — short MOOCs — injected momentum into the digitization debate at German universities. They stand out by the fact that the take place exclusively online with a theoretically unlimited number of participants. In last year’s Horizon Report, MOOCs were listed as short-term key trend, whereas the current report mentions them within the category of “difficult challenges”. They promise the most affordable, unique treatise of standardized educational content and offer universities a way to distinguish themselves. However, looking at implementations over the past few years, we are also beginning to see where MOOCs fall short of expectations. Considering high dropout rates and limited interaction between learners, we have to evaluate how the tools and services currently in use meet the needs of the learners.

»A number of respected thought leaders, however, believe that the current manifestation of MOOCs has deviated from the initial premise outlined by Downes and Siemens when they pioneered the first courses in Canada. They envisioned MOOCs as ecosystems of connectivism — a pedagogy in which knowledge is not a destination but an ongoing activity, fueled by the relationships people build and the deep discussions catalyzed within the MOOC. That model emphasizes knowledge production over consumption, and new knowledge that emerges from the process helps to sustain and evolve the MOOC environment.«

http://www.nmc.org/publications/2014-horizon-report-higher-ed, page 26

These aspects could be seen as reasons why the report of 2014 declared the ›increasing use of social media‹ and the ›integration of online, blended and collaborative learning‹ as key trends, returning focus to the human needs of learners.

Following this, the ›Flipped Classroom Model‹ is highlighted as an important development. This teaching method tries to strengthen the time actually spent together in class, by the means of an intelligent integration of online and offline learning. The idea behind this method is not to use class time reciting information but to deepen the understanding of specific problems or interesting aspects in dialogue with the students. Students inform themselves constantly before or after class — for example, by the reception of lecture recordings and deepening e-book contents. Based on the comments and questions posed by students online, teachers can prepare the class more targeted to use the actual time spent together in class to deal with concrete problems. The classroom environment is transformed into a dynamic, more community-oriented space in which students discuss and work together on their assignments. The time spent together is more interactive and allows a more intense exchange between teachers and students and between the students themselves. The role of the teacher shifts from lecturer to mentor who individually guides the learning activities of the students.

In a review of “Flipped Learning Networks”, one of the four pillars is the call for change in learning culture — from a traditional teacher-centered towards a more learner-centered approach.

»Students move from being the product of teaching to the center of learning, where they are actively involved in knowledge formation through opportunities to participate in and evaluate their learning in a manner that is personally meaningful.«

Flipped Learning Network: http://flippedlearning.org/cms/lib07/VA01923112/Centricity/Domain/41/LitReview_FlippedLearning.pdf

The research on this model sees the advantages in “active learning” — that is, self-reliant learning, which asynchronously builds upon the individual experiences of the learner. The knowledge itself is created within individual pathways of learning. This for example is a result of project-oriented work and the selection of self-interest topics. Another pillar of the research quoted above refers to “peer instruction” — which means learning by fellow students. This again is an important aspect in the teaching situations we observed.

But the most interesting key trend of this year’s Horizon Reports seems to me the ›Paradigm shift from students as consumers towards students as creators‹. Students engage and shape their individual field of competence and thus their career by the individual choice of class contents. Some universities already allow “Student Studies” — i.e. a demand-led study in which the course contents are not made by the teachers but by the students.

Zeppelin University Friedrichshafen: http://www.zeppelin-university.com/english/degree_programs/student_studies.php?navid=303

However, until today the conventional learning platforms get in the way and prevent an active participation by the learners. The ability to create courses, customize workspaces and share content with others is usually limited to teachers. In the world of E-Learning students are still treated as passive consumers and get — if at all — only small niches where they can exchange ideas.

Another key trend worth noting in this year’s Horizon Report are ›Learning Analytics‹. The term refers to the collection, measurement and evaluation of data from individual learning processes that should help to optimize learning. The German Association of University Professors and Lecturers (in short DHV) commented on this as follows:

»For the users of digital teaching formats, it is important to preserve and protect their interests [in privacy]. The collection of data, such as response speed, working length and intensity, repetition frequencies, etc., which allow conclusions on individuals study behavior, shall be prohibited for reasons of privacy protection.« (translation)

Statement DHV in german : Online-Lehre als Teil der universitären Lehre (S. 4) http://www.hochschulverband.de/cms1/fileadmin/redaktion/download/pdf/resolutionen/Online-Lehre_als_Teil_der_universitaeren_Lehre.pdf

The Incom way to meet these challenges

An environment for cooperation

The teaching in creative subjects, for which Incom was originally designed for, doesn’t take place in mass events — unlike many other academic areas — but lives by the joint efforts and exchange in comparatively small, interwoven groups. Discussion and feedback is multi-directional, that means students not only speak with teachers about their work, but the opinion of fellow students is equally important. The influence of informal learning may even take precedence over the defined syllabus. A typical learning cycle consists of research, experiment, reflection, discussion, documentation and presentation. Perhaps the most crucial feature of this process is that students are not alone. The Incom platform supports this new style of teaching and learning and provides the various actors with a common place for exchange and cooperation. Reflection and presentation of individual findings are as important as inspiration by the work of others. A networked community model moderates the various interwoven groups and sums them up to an entity. Openness, transparency and privacy go hand in hand. Thus, the platform initiates an open and human culture of cooperation.

The Incom platform involves all users across roles in a cooperation on par. Teachers, students and employees of the university have almost the same rights, and may initiate and shape their Workspaces how they want them to be. This basic setting of equitable coexistence encourages scientific cooperation. Students as well as teachers can create their own topic-based Workspaces in order to share information and organize their studies. Project work may already be documented and reflected at an early stage and and then released for peer-review within the working group.

Without invasive analytics

As Incom is not a traditional e-learning platform, which channeled their users through choreographed contents and queries knowledge through quizzes, the use of “learning analytics” in the currently evolved form seems irrelevant. The accumulation and evaluating data on the number of logins and the time spent with content seems to be insufficient predictable in respect of the performance and abilities of a learner. In exposing this data — if only for teachers — we see a massive violation of privacy of the students. In addition to Blackboard — a wide spread learning management system — a tracking tool named “Retention Center” is provided, which allows teachers to observe their students. The demo video feels like a horror movie, at least for me as a European.

https://help.blackboard.com/en-us/Learn/9.1_SP_10_and_SP_11/Instructor/040_Student_Course_Experience/Student_Performance/Using_the_Retention_Center

Thus students are not treated individually, but sorted into predefined drawers that are created by questionable rules. The computable characteristics do not offer the necessary relevance criteria. The primary goal of Web Analytics — namely trap individual problems and take learners by the hand to solve them — we perceive as not well implemented at the current state of development. The accumulation of behavioral data could also be used positively in order to bundle interests, to reward commitment and to generate awareness of the specific situation within a community.

Developed for the learners needs

Interestingly, the Horizon Report 2014 mentioned ›Agile Approaches‹ as a long-term trend. Agile methods live from direct communication with the users. The development of the Incom platform has been driven by this principle for a long time. Thus, each installation has a specific workspace, where users discuss the development of the platform and future improvements. These discussions inspire our further development.

Incom’s underlying structure is shaped by minimizing complexity and designing for flexibility. The latter is quasi the answer to the former. And the flexibility we are talking of here, implies a ›Design for Hackability‹. Hackability, for us, is a term with positive connotations — it stands for creativity and user initiative. Existing systems are twisted in order to serve not only intended uses but also the unintended. The story of web technologies shows that this is exactly the way to develop user-desired tools. In order to implement agile structures into higher education, we need a system that not only allows agile processes but also supports and appreciates them. Thereby values that are inherent in the system such as decentralized control, equal structures of action, privacy, simple and self-evident options are just as crucial as appealing interfaces.

»… designing for hackability means allowing and encouraging people to make technologies be what they want them to be.«

Galloway, A., Brucker-Cohen, J., Gaye, L., Goodman, E. and Hill, D. 2004. Design for Hackability. In Proc DIS ’04: 363–366.