Trends in education technology in higher education

Abstract

Trends are important to us as researchers and practitioners in higher education (Boer et al., 2002). Trends influence decisions about funding for research, decisions about organisational infrastructure, and the establishment of new degrees. The dictionary definition of trend is a general direction in which something is developing or changing, and also a fashion. According to these definitions, a trend is both measurable with evidence that confirms the trend’s existence and direction, and at the same time emergent, and sometimes fleeting. There is little in the design of tertiary institutions that encourages a timely response to trends, and yet there are people within universities who invest significant time in providing support for the implementation of new types of technology or pedagogical approaches for teaching and research staff. Outside of university settings, these would be R&D teams – testing the use of the latest technology and figuring out how it could be implemented in new contexts. White papers are often the way that these findings are shared in other areas. In education technology in higher education, we share innovation in practice through conferences and journals as well as online social networks and communities of practice such as Twitter and professional society networking platforms. The sharing of research in the area of education technology is subject to a significant lag for several reasons. Social networks reach some, but not all of the community, and journal articles can sometimes take months to move from submission to publication. Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, sharing at conferences has been challenging, but even outside of the current restrictions on travel, conference attendance was reliant on funding from organisations or by individuals. Despite this, research in this field still experiences trends in emerging technology, methodological and theoretical approaches, and pedagogical practice