5 Trends in Education to Keep Watching in 2015

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Happy New Year, Everyone !!!  With my first post of the new year, I feel compelled to share with you the trends in education that I am watching.

One of the reasons I started this blog was to write about the trends in education that I was seeing that have affected me as a teacher, content developer and educational consultant.

So to that end, here are five trends that I list below in any order of importance. My trends list is by far not meant to be a complete list but just a “tip of the iceberg” of the trends that I’m keeping my eye on as they affect my teaching and practice.

Please note that the impact of the trends I list are based on my own observations, opinions and experiences.

5 Trends in Education to Keep Watching in 2015

 

Mobile Education

For the past few years, I’ve done a Google survey in my online courses and have noticed that more students use smartphones to download and view course materials while at work. This fact made me add PDF printable modules to my course to make my students’ lives a little easier. As I tweak the design of my courses, I think about the fact that my students on the other end are not always at a desktop!

Other factors that are driving mobile education are that prices for smaller computing devices such as smartphones and tablets are drastically coming down.  There are more online courses available and in additon, more colleges are giving their students mobile devices which increases their access.

Independent Faculty

I use the term “independent faculty” to refer to adjunct faculty or those faculty that chose to be hired by multiple colleges. Thus, they are not “married” to one school. Note that this doesn’t mean they are not as committed to their chosen colleges!  Many of these faculty members teach exclusively online and have chosen this path of teaching for a career.

I was in a LinkedIn forum on this subject and was dismayed at the number people I met looking for summers off by “breaking” into a cushy tenure job in higher education.  Having been in higher education for many years, I can say that: 1) you don’t break in but are “initiated” in after a long, hard 6 years at most universities and 2) teachers who are dedicated to education don’t have “cushy” jobs.


I myself have been teaching at the college level for 23 years and have been:

     * full-time on 2 faculties
     * part-time faculty/full-time administrator at 3 campuses
     * part-time faculty at 2 campuses


I love my current job as consultant / course developer / independent faculty member / writer because it allows me the freedom to take on projects I love and actually want to do.  I’ve developed more courses and written more textbooks as a ghostwriter and been paid much more than my tenured counterparts. My current preferred status as an “independent faculty” has opened horizons that I don’t think I could have ever reached as a faculty member.
 

Saying goodbye to the traditional college classroom

The decline of the traditional college classroom may be a sad fact to some, like those trying to get hired on a physical campus as a full-time faculty member. But the reality is that for most schools, having large numbers of physical classes is really too expensive. I first noticed this trend in 2001 when some of the lower level classes in my own department were replaced by a self-paced computer course for students. Colleges and universities are finding that having students sit in for lectures 2-3 times per week are not really an effectively way of teaching the students.

Flipped Classrooms

If you’ve never heard of a flipped classroom, then the first thing to know is that this trend is certainly nothing new. I’d say it has deeper roots in K-12 classrooms but is gaining speed in the college classroom. When I first saw this on the college level, I thought it was simply a way for faculty to get out of lecturing in front of their students. By creating a “flipped” classroom, faculty present instructional videos and other online materials that students ingest BEFORE the class session. Then, students meet online or come to a physical class to work on problems related to the lecture.

I believe that several factors are driving the flipped classroom approach. First, there is an increase in self-paced, online education which is a great fit for the flipped approach. Second, the real-time capabilities of educational technology (i.e. LMS’s) enable faculty to assign interesting activities and assessments to students. Third, there is a move from rote learning models towards deeper learning models which give students a more enhanced learning experience.
 

While I’m a fan of flipped classrooms (or some form of it) for most teaching situations, there are some that I would personally hesitate to use this method on. In particular, I can think of some immature students that would not come prepared to class; some adult learners who need more hand-holding; some disabled students who have trouble taking notes from material without an instructor, etc.

The flipped classroom is definitely an approach for the active learner AND the active teacher. The active learner (student) needs confidence and courage to wade through unfamiliar material without a teacher. The active teacher needs to be innovative enough to create activities to help students cement their learning of topics and create activities/assessments that promote deeper learning. Not an easy feat for a teacher but definitely worth trying out at some level.

Promoting deeper learning

Simply put, “deeper learning” encompasses any teaching style that encourages students to connect more meaningfully to material. I remember when I first started teaching in the early ‘90’s and how faculty were expected to cover the entire textbook no matter what the students actually learned.  The “rule of thumb” was to teach 100% of the book, hoping students would retain 70%.

The deeper learning stuff was not the main focus but being able to regurgitate facts and know about many different things was the focus. This teaching strategy was deeply rooted in my own education. For instance, when I trained in Computer Science as a student, we learned 9 different programming languages – all of which did practically the same things – stored variables, input data, performed data manipulations and spit out results. Nowadays computer majors don’t learn as many languages but instead learn how to use the tools they have to solve problems. 

Now in many of my courses, the focus is on creating meaningful knowledge to apply to real problems and situations. For me the reality of deeper learning is that my students need to do this to survive in the REAL world. As the teacher, I need to be more of a facilitator and build a learning environment for my students that engage them, requires them to solve problems and take away the "essentials" from my courses. When my students tell me that they think about something differently or do something differently BECAUSE of taking my courses, than I know I've done my job well.


What are your thoughts on these trends? Are there others you are watching? How do you think they will affect you as a teacher and course designer? Share your thoughts.

Articles related to these trends

5 key takeaways on today's online student
http://www.educationdive.com/news/5-key-takeaways-on-todays-online-student/276365/

·

Innovations Designed for Deeper Learning in Higher Education
http://www.educause.edu/library/resources/innovations-designed-deeper-learning-higher-education

 
Lynn U claims free iPads are boosting education
http://www.educationdive.com/news/lynn-u-claims-free-ipads-are-boosting-education/346826/

 

Top 10 e-Learning Statistics for 2014 You Need To Know
http://elearningindustry.com/top-10-e-learning-statistics-for-2014-you-need-to-know

Other resources I recommend

    Flipped Classroom.org
http://flippedclassroom.org/

    30 Trends in Educational Technology: What is driving the timeline
(* Be sure to read the comments on this one to see what people agree with and don’t agree with. Very interesting) http://www.teachthought.com/trends/30-trends-education-technology-2015/

    Online Learning Trends to Watch in 2015 (Infographic) http://www.edtechmagazine.com/higher/article/2014/12/10-online-learning-trends-watch-2015-infographic-0