As the week began, I started getting familiar with the course. As an instructional designer, I enjoy studying the design of a course as well as the content. I was also pondering which emerging trends I wanted to learn more about and to share. As I usually want to utilize my coursework at work, I asked the senior designer if she had any ideas. She mentioned the tele-presence robots that we’d seen during a webinar called Learning Spaces. I was thinking about choosing flexible learning spaces, adaptive learning, G Suite for higher education, or maybe light board video creation, since we are revamping our light board studio to operate like a One-Button Studio.
Throughout the week I read about the Diffusion of Innovation (DoI). It wasn’t my first time to hear of DoI or see it in action, but I definitely learned more about it and how to apply it. The information I learned will make a difference in how I approach and communicate change in my work going forward.
Since I still hadn’t decided on my emerging trends, I read the list of emerging trends and also the 2017 Horizon report for higher education. I had read one of the K-12 editions in my first Master of Educational Technology course back in 2013. I also remember reading a higher education edition in 2015. As I was reading through the table of contents, I was excited that in a sense I had predicted many of the topics listed there.
After reading the sections on the topics that interested me most, I narrowed it down to flexible learning spaces(including tele-presence or distance learning technologies)and next generation Learning Management System(LMS) or digital learning environment. I searched for and read a number of resources on these topics, and I found it interesting that I had difficulty finding peer reviewed articles on next generation LMS. Perhaps it’s too new. I found several articles from Educause, Campus Technology, and similar resources though.
During our office’s recent strategic planning meeting, we discussed the possibility of designing and implementing model learning spaces in the classrooms by our offices. Ones that were flexible and could accommodate blended synchronous sessions, since a couple programs at the University are offering courses using that learning environment now.
As an instructional designer who uses Blackboard, who has tried Rezzly, built a course in Google Sites and in Adobe Captivate, and participated in a course using mainly social media, I’m very interested in what the next generation LMS might be like.
Catalyst 