Ed Tech Trends Experts identify the most substantial tech-related obstacles to education, ranging from the solvable to the downright wickedly difficult. Weak digital literacy skills among students and faculty are hampering the effective use of technology in schools. But according to a panel of experts, this problem, as prevalent and pernicious as it may be, is within our power to solve. Some of the other obstacles identified by the panel ... not so much. The panel of experts, led by the New Media Consortium and the Educause Learning Initiative, identified six impediments that are hampering education and the adoption of technology in education in significant ways. The findings were published in a report released in February, the NMC Horizon Report: 2016 Higher Education Edition. The issues were categorized in one of three groupings: barriers that are troublesome but to some degree solvable; obstacles that are more difficult and will require substantial effort to resolve; and impediments that are so difficult that they may not be within our power to solve ever. Each of the six identified trends has implications for policy, leadership and practice. Solvable Challenges Digital literacy is a worldwide problem that affects young and old alike. And despite wishful thinking to the contrary, it's not one that is solving itself as technology propagates and becomes more commonplace. As the researchers noted, while the younger generations may be immersed in digital technology and consider it mundane, they are not necessarily any more adept at using it effectively. "Students today would appear to be more digitally literate than previous generations because many have grown up immersed in technology-rich environments, but research has shown that this does not necessarily equate to confidence, especially in an educational context," according to the researchers. "The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development's (OECD) most recent survey of adult skills found that millennials in the [United States] placed nearly last in digital literacy as compared to other developed nations. Illuminating this problem is the Rasmussen College study 'Digital Literacy in 2015,' which reports that one in four millennials want to improve their digital literacy, but 37 percent find the Internet 'scary,' more so than respondents aged 35 and over." Nevertheless, the experts labeled the problem as a solvable one largely because efforts that are already underway to improve digital literacy have begun to bear fruit, while others, such as the TechHire Initiative, look promising. Education institutions are providing their own solutions as well. "Solving this challenge calls for innovative approaches to delivering digital literacy training to students, and a number of projects are well underway," according to the report. The researchers cited a number of programs aimed at helping students with their digital skills — beyond learning to use the technology. For instance, "Virginia Commonwealth University's 'UNIV 200: Inquiry and the Craft of Argument' is a blended learning course that takes students through a number of exercises, such as discovering the work of innovators in the digital realm and developing personal learning networks through the creation of Web sites and social media communities. At Ryerson University in Canada, coding is seen as an emerging and important literacy that will cultivate in students the skills needed to define and create the digital tools of the future. In their 'Challenge Accepted' workshops, students learn how to create a mobile app in only three hours."
The newly released "NMC Horizon Report: 2016 Higher Education Edition" includes three sections about higher education technology adoption; one for trends with short-term, mid-term, and long-term impact; one for challenges that are solvable, difficult, or "wicked"; and one for important developments between one and five years to adoption.