The 6 Major Barriers to Technology Adoption in Higher Ed – Campus Technology

Tech Trends

Even as technology proliferates in education at unprecedented rates, new hurdles including limitations of the human mind to keep up with technological advances are throwing themselves in the way of effective implementation.

Each year, the New Media Consortium, in collaboration with the Educause Learning Initiative, pulls together a panel of experts to settle on a list of 18 issues that the experts contend will have a major impact on education practice and policy in the near term, mid-term and long term six significant trends, six significant developments and six barriers. The experts (79 this year, including 75 panelists and four project leaders) range from NMC and Educause staff to prominent figures in academia and policy from around the world. The process is accessible to the public through the Horizon Project wiki at horizon.wiki.nmc.org, and the complete list of participants can be found at horizon.wiki.nmc.org/Panel+of+Experts.

Here's a word you don't hear much anymore: obsolescence. But it's a word that's making a comeback in 2017 in a new and distressing way. Popularly used in a business context (e.g. the planned obsolescence of consumer devices that are designed to fall apart in a few years, like cars and laptops), it's now being used to describe the human mind. It's no longer the technology that's becoming obsolete too quickly; it's the knowledge of technology that's rapidly falling behind advances or changes in technologies. And that obsolescence, according to the New Media Consortium's Horizon Report: 2017 Higher Education Edition, is just one of the six major challenges facing technology in higher ed in the coming years.

The Horizon Report is NMC's annual research project that, with a panel of higher education experts, attempts to identify significant and not necessarily obvious technology trends that will impact education in the coming years. Among those trends are those accelerating adoption of technology, those impeding technology and those that are simply educationally significant technology-based developments.

This year's report identified six major roadblocks to education technology, either in its adoption or in its implementation. The report divided the roadblocks into three categories: those that pose challenges but that are solvable in the near term, those that are more difficult to solve but are still understandable and those that are "wicked difficult" nigh impossible even to define, let alone solve.

Falling into the wicked difficult category in this year's report are two issues that did not make last year's list: managing the obsolescence of human knowledge and, perhaps even more difficult, grappling with the changing role of the educator.

On the human obsolescence front, the report explained: "Staying organized and current presents a challenge to academics in a world where educational needs, software, and devices advance at a strenuous rate. New developments in technology hold great potential for improving the quality of learning and operations. However, just as faculty and staff are able to master one technology, it seems a new version launches. Institutions must grapple with the longevity of technologies and devise back-up plans before making large investments. There is added pressure to ensure that any tools selected are in service of deepening learning outcomes in ways that are measurable."

Professional development can only go so far to alleviating this problem, though the report did note a few exemplars. One of those is the Houston Community College system, which provides both technical and pedagogical assistance to adjuncts. As the report described: "Eight Curriculum Innovation Centers work with instructors to integrate the latest technologies into their courses and facilitate engaging learning experiences. Adjuncts receive training on special projects, such as digital storytelling and designing online courses, as well as basic assistance with LMS and grade entry software. The centers are accessible during set hours or by appointment, providing flexibility for adjuncts to visit the location nearest their home, place of employment, or teaching campus."

Another exemplar noted in the report was Penn State University, which "employs a three-pronged approach for managing knowledge obsolescence among faculty and staff: providing them with emerging technologies for freeform experimentation, bringing together instructional designers and programmers to reimagine how technology can transform classroom activities, and establishing long-term bonds between leadership and faculty to engage in creative problem-solving."

According to Samantha Becker, co-principal investigator for the Horizon Project and NMC's senior director of communications, this particular challenge "converges with integrating formal and informal learning. Not only is keeping up with new educational trends and technologies an important part of formal PD, but educators and staff must (somehow) find the time in the limited free time they have to pursue external learning pathways. I've heard educators, for example, refer to their social media as personal learning networks."

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The 6 Major Barriers to Technology Adoption in Higher Ed - Campus Technology