The NMC is pleased to announce the release of the Technology Outlook for New Zealand Tertiary Education 2011-2016, an NMC Horizon Report Regional Analysis. This report reflects a collaborative effort between the New Media Consortium, the New Zealand Ministry of Education, Ako Aotearoa, the Australasian Council on Open, Distance, and E-learning (ACODE), and the Distance Education Association of New Zealand (DEANZ). The research underpinning the report makes use of the NMC’s Delphi-based process for bringing groups of experts to a consensus viewpoint, in this case around the impact of emerging technologies on teaching, learning, research, or information management in New Zealand tertiary education over the next five years.

The Technology Outlook series is the newest member of the NMC Horizon Project family of publications, and is aimed specifically at understanding both local and global differences in technology uptake as well as the current and future state of education in different parts of the world. 

This report is an important outcome of the Wellington 2010 Strategic Technology Summit, led by the NMC, ACODE, Ako Aotearoa, the Ministry of Education, and Massey University. These organisations came together in September 2010 to create an action plan to advance a better understanding of the place for information and communication technologies in New Zealand education, and to invoke a clearer sense of urgency in furthering national and sector-focused initiatives. A major call-to-action that arose from this summit was documented in the resulting communiqué, as follows:

More strategic forecasting is needed both within and across educational institutions. Strategic technology forecasting efforts are essential in understanding both the opportunities and the challenges related to leveraging emerging technologies. One such effort that has been formally proposed by DEANZ aims to lead social networking to kick off ongoing production of future scenarios for tertiary education nationally.

The Technology Outlook for New Zealand Tertiary Education 2011-2016 was produced to complement the DEANZ effort by exploring emerging technologies and forecasting their potential impact expressly in a New Zealand context.

The 2011 Horizon.NZ Advisory Board, a diverse body of 38 edtech experts, engaged in a month-long series of wiki discussions before voting on the top 12 emerging technologies, as well as the top 7 trends and challenges affecting education in New Zealand. The outcomes are being released today at a series of high-level workshops in New Zealand, hosted by the NMC, the New Zealand Ministry of Education, Ako Aotearoa, ACODE, and DEANZ.

Among the technology topics featured in the report are collaborative environments, tablet computing, electronic publishing, and next-generation batteries. To find out the rest of the technologies agreed upon by the 2011 Horizon.NZ Advisory board, download a free copy of the report at the link below.

> Download the free report