In the spirit of the NMC Horizon reports, a group of scholars at the Open University has prepared a thorough and thoughtful analysis of what is coming in pedagogy.     The 36 report is available here, and though its attention is focused upon post-secondary teaching and learning, there is much here that is highly applicable to those of us seeking to be more informed about coming trends in K-12 pedagogy.

The authors pay deference to the NMC Horizon reports, but explain they have a slightly different goal:

We acknowledge inspiration from the NMC Horizon Reports as well as other future-gazing reports on education. Those explore how innovations in technology might influence education; we examine how innovations in pedagogy might be enacted in an age of personal and networked technology.

In a short commentary on the report, an educational blogger who identifies himself only as “Derek” orders this reports coming innovations by immediacy:

  1. Personal inquiry learning  – Learning through collaborative inquiry and active investigation
  2. Seamless learning  – Connecting learning across settings, technologies and activities
  3. MOOCs – Massive open online courses
  4. Assessment for learning  – Assessment that supports the learning process through diagnostic feedback
  5. New pedagogy for e-books – Innovative ways of teaching and learning with next-generation e-books
  6. Publisher-led short courses – Publishers producing commercial short courses for leisure and professional development
  7. Badges to accredit learning  – Open framework for gaining recognition of skills and achievements
  8. Rebirth of academic publishing  – New forms of open scholarly publishing
  9. Learning analytics – Data-driven analysis of learning activities and environments
  10. Rhizomatic learning – Knowledge constructed by self-aware communities adapting to environmental conditions

Setting aside numbers six and eight from the list atop, which simply don’t interest me very much, and deferring four and nine to a separate discussion at bottom, focus upon the remaining six (1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 10), which lead me to draw out what I think is the single most important unifying theme and takeaway from this report:

the future of learning lies in a student-centered, web 2.0 empowered, networked connectivism.   This is the New Culture of Learning, and we owe it to our own life-long learning and to our students to study this mode closely and exploit every opportunity to advance it. 

Note that in nearly all of these six, technology is essential, particularly the power of the internet.   Personal inquiry learning and badges, of course, are ancient, but are both accelerated dramatically by learning online.

Below let me share some key quotes from the document, with comments, to draw out this unifying theme: (more…)