This session demonstrated the methodology used to develop the Horizon Report. The Horizon Report identifies emerging technologies and trends that will impact education. The method used to compile the report can be adapted for use in strategic planning at institutional level. It is based on the Delphi Method developed in the 60's and uses a range of experts including innovators, opinion leaders and early adopters to reach a consensus about what will and won't be the next big thing based on their expert knowledge. Ideally, the team of experts should have different backgrounds and each bring something different to the table.
The process takes place mainly in a wiki, and while the team of experts are allowed to contribute to the wiki they are not allowed to interact with each other. This is so that each expert is allowed to develop their own opinions without being influenced by strong characters. The first step is for each expert to bring newspaper clippings, reports, press releases etc about new and emerging technologies to the wiki. Together they build a bank of resources of all potential technologies to be included in the report. The wiki look like this: -
http://horizon.wiki.nmc.org/
The next step is to develop the research questions. These can also be seen on the wiki. The experts then attempt to compile a list of technologies to answer each research question. Today, we attempted to address the question:
What are the key emerging technologies you see developing to the point that learning-focussed institutions should begin to take notice during the next three to five years?
Once we had compiled a list (there weren't many of us to our list was made up of 36 items but in reality this would be much longer), a process of elimination began. Each expert is given a number of tokens with which to vote for their favourite technologies (general rule of thumb for number of tokens given at this stage is the square route of the number of items on list). We were given 6 tokens, so we could put between one and six tokens in the items that we felt most strongly about. From this, the top six items, based on all experts votes are taken through to the next stage. Experts are then given half the number of tokens to vote again in the next round, and the top three go into the report. The report is then written based on descriptions, press reports, discussions and any other relevant information.
During the session, we reduced the process which would normally take three to four weeks or longer to just three hours but it was definitely interesting session and I think the approach might be quite useful for our 'Horizon Scanning'.
More detailed information about the session and session resources can be found at: http://www.educause.edu/node/175997
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Good proposal Helen - I'll flag it up (and CommentPress which Louise talked about) to the Horizon Scanning 'team'.
ReplyDeleteWere there any questions in the session about the exclusion of good niche applications for example? Do the good ideas always go through? There are some/many influential characters involved who operate loudly beyond the wiki! Do they really claim to be objective and democratic? As Susannah says, it looks like something we should try.
ReplyDeleteAndrew, the 'rules' were that experts were not allowed to communicate directly with each other in the early stages as the process. I guess it's possible that known experts with strong views may have some kind of influence beyond the boundaries of the process but this wasn't addressed in the session. Is it possible that if they have a strong influence then the technologies that they are pushing are likely to succeed anyway? And as for the exclusion of niche applications this was definitely a weakness of the process, but as far as the presenters were concerned, the remit of the Horizon Report was to take the top 3 technologies that were likely to significantly impact upon education. I wonder if the process could be replicated to look at niche applications?
ReplyDeleteA fascinating insight - thanks Helen.
ReplyDeleteAnd, what an excellent resource the clippings page makes for lazy information freeloaders like me - look:
http://spectrum.ieee.org/biomedical/bionics/augmented-reality-in-a-contact-lens/