POD Conference 2010 – What Are Emerging Trends in Higher Education?
During the final session of last week’s 2010 POD Network Conference in St. Louis, POD’s Professional Development Committee (PCD) identified several “emerging trends” in higher education. These were all programs and initiatives related to the assessment of student learning, and they included the AAC&U’s Liberal Education and America’s Promise (LEAP) project, the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE), the European Bologna Process, the American Democracy Project, and the e-portfolio movement. It was this last item that struck me as funny since I don’t see the e-portfolio movement as “emerging.” Certainly, e-portfolios as tools for assessing student learning (particularly across a series of courses) are new to some campuses, but I’ve been reading about them for years.
I mentioned this on Twitter, and Jim Julius agreed. He pointed to other initiatives that he felt might have been better classified as “emerging” than e-portfolios, notably course design initiatives like the National Center for Academic Transformation (NCAT) and EDUCAUSE’s Next Generation Learning Challenges (NGLC) project. While these aren’t primarily assessment initiatives, they both include student learning assessment components. They’re definitely newer initiatives than the e-portfolio movement.
During the PCD session I was also thinking about the “Revolution or Evolution? Social Technology and Pedagogical Change” session I facilitated with Jim Julius and Dwayne Harapnuik on Friday. In that session, we identified a very different set of emerging trends in higher education, including the impact of ubiquitous information (via Google or Wikipedia or the Khan Academy or whatever) on the goals we have for student learning and the potential of social media to foster new and more inclusive forms of collaboration. Some would argue that these two trends are set to revolutionize higher education. Whether or not you agree with those statements, it’s important that faculty developers (and others) be able to response to them.
The trends that Jim, Dwayne, and I described weren’t mentioned during the PCD session. Are they so far out on the horizon that most of my POD colleagues haven’t seen them yet? Or are they aware of these trends but consider them too far off to respond to? In other words, does “emerging” mean something new but not too far out there? I tend to use a broader definition of “emerging,” and I worry that if faculty developers aren’t looking far enough into the possible future that they won’t be prepared to address important trends and changes in higher education.
Image: “Flags and Some Guy in a Space Suit” by me. What emerging trends does this guy see that we don’t? =)