Trends in eLearning – Week 1 28 Jan 2014

This week we started the trends in eLearning with Kevin ORourke. In his description of the module he stated we will be looking at the Horizon Reports and Gartner Hype Cycles and discuss the findings. We review the preview of the of the 2013 Higher Education Horizon report and discussed tablet computing, big data, Gamification and 3D printing.

Looking at the 2012 hype cycle of emerging technologies it was interesting to see what was at the trigger, peak of inflated expectation, trough of disillusionment slope of enlightenment and plateau of productivity stages. The thing that most struck me was that although mobile/smartphone/tables were between sliding into the trough of disillusionment up to the plateau of productivity BYOD strategies were at he top of the peak of inflated expectation. In my mind these will need to be linked in some way to ensure devices can connect at BYOD events.

When Kevin was talking about how learning is broke into manageable pieces that users can handle in a systematic way I immediately though back to my HR degree days and Taylorism. I had dismissed the though in my head until I read Nicholas Carr’s Article Is Google Making Us Stupid?.