Five research questions guided our selection of emerging technologies and ideas for the 2006 Horizon Report. The first three corresponded to the three horizons that are used to organize the report: one year or less; one to three years; or three to five years before the technology or idea reached the mainstream. The last two, new for 2006, were intended to help us focus our selections on the report's foci of teaching, learning, and creative expression.
Dozens of responses were gathered for each of the questions from the Horizon Project Advisory Board and experts in industry and on campuses. The raw responses can be found below. The complete ranking data can be found here. The top-ranked technologies that emerged are described here.
Ranking Process
STATUS: Advisory Board members have completed both passes at ranking the technologies, trends, and challenges featured in the 2006 Horizon Report and the analysis of those rankings is completed. Each Advisory Board member was given 10 votes to allocate among the items listed under each of the five questions (50 votes total) as a way of indicating the relative importance of the items to our foci of teaching, learning and creative expression. A reverse ranking approach was used for the second round in which each Advisory Board member was asked to eliminate just one technology from each of the three adoption horizons. This process, given the toungue-in-cheek name of "Survivor – Horizon Edition" resulted in the final selections that appear in the 2006 Report. The process is further described here in the email instructions sent to the Advisory Board.
Instructions Please add your thoughts liberally here – ideas for things to include in the report, descriptions or lists of technologies you think are going to be important, or just musings on the questions.
For a detailed description of the 12 technologies listed below from 2005, see the 2005 'Short List'.
UPDATE: 9.28.05 The answers and comments to the five questions have been broken out into separate pages to make reading and editing more managable. Click on any question to jump to that question's new page. (Larry Johnson)
Q1. What would you list among the established technologies that colleges and universities should all be using broadly today to support or enhance teaching, learning, or creative expression?
2005 Advisory Board initial responses:
– Enterprise-Level Tools for Learning
– Ubiquitous Wireless
– Hybrid Learning (Blended Learning)
– Students' Communication Tools
Click here to enter the discussion area for Question 1
Q2. What technologies that have a solid user base in consumer, entertainment, or other industries should colleges and universities be actively looking for ways to apply?
2005 Advisory Board initial responses:
– Technologies for Searching and Finding
– Open Source (as an Enterprise-Level Strategy)
– Affective Computing (rename Multi-sensory? )
– Pervasive/Context-Aware Computing
Click here to enter the discussion area for Question 2
Q3. What are the key emerging technologies you see developing to the point that colleges and universities should begin to take notice during the next 3 to 5 years? What institutions or companies are the leaders in these technologies?
2005 Advisory Board initial responses:
– Knowledge Webs
– Social Networking and Connection Tools
– Gaming
– Augmented Reality
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Q4. What do you see as the key challenge(s) related to teaching, learning, or creative expression that colleges and universities will face during the next 5 years?
(This is a new question for 2006)
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Q5. What trends do you expect to have a significant impact on the ways in which colleges and universities approach their core missions of teaching and research?
Six trends were identified in 2005. For an in-depth discussion, see the 2005 Horizon Report, pp 4-5
– Shifts in the locus of ownership of knowledge
– New models for sharing and licensing content and software
– Lines blurring between laptops, handhelds, and cell phones
– Increasing access to the Internet
– People using technology to connect with each other easily, informally, and on many levels
– Content valued over format
Click here to enter the discussion area for Question 5