File:EDUCAUSE 2013 - The Connected Age

Description
Connecting is a powerful metaphor for IT and higher education. Anyone and everything can be interconnected—people, resources, data, ideas. Linked and tagged, tweeted and texted, followed and friended. As we become more connected, can higher education be better than we could have previously imagined? It's complex and messy in a bring-your-own-device, DIY-learning, there-is-an-app-for-that world. Yet it promises agility, flexibility, and personalization. And anyone can participate.

Our connections create relationships. Our relationships create communities. Of faculty. Of researchers. Of learners. Of institutions.

Higher Education is a connected community. And connections can do transformative things.

When education is connected, it forms a pathway: • Formal and informal learning are no longer separated. • Learners can connect to an ever-widening circle of mentors, peers, experiences, and knowledge. • Games, simulations, collaboration tools, and augmented reality can help learners connect-the-dots in ways never before possible. • Progress to degree becomes visible with data driven dashboards • Success is improved with alerts and interventions.

Gate keeping need no longer apply in the connected age—it's about the choices, possibilities, and pathways in front of us.

New business models are possible in the connected age.

Open educational resources and peer-learning change the cost equation.

Competency-based models and prior learning assessments allow learners to get credit for what they already know and pay only for the education they need.

With MOOCs, the course is free but the credit is not.

Courses, credits, and services can be bundled or unbundled; the models can be inside-out, outside-in, peer-to-peer, free, or fremium.

We created these technologies. When everything is connected, the possibilities explode. We can change learning experiences, catalyze new forms of scholarship, design new institutions, and interconnect with a world made better by education. We are creating the connected age.