Bryan Alexander
Visions of the higher education horizon: possible futures
How can we prepare for emergent technologies as they impact higher education, transforming our campuses in ways beyond cyberspace? This presentation begins by outlining futurism’s state of the art, introducing approaches currently used, such as prediction markets games and the Delphi method. Then we dive into another method, scenarios, in order to consider several possible narratives of higher education in 2010: gamified reality, the long recession, the open world, the silo world, and augmented Earth.
Bryan Alexander is Director of Research at NITLE, the National Institute for Technology in Liberal Education (USA).
Bryan researches, writes, consults, and develops programs on advanced uses of information technology in liberal arts contexts. His primary research interests concern emerging technologies, mobile and wireless computing, digital gaming, and social media. Other interests include digital writing, information literacy, project management, futurism, and interdisciplinary collaboration. He blogs at Techne and leads the effort at Liberal Education Today, a crowd-sourced, Twitter-supported conversation on inquiry, pedagogy, and emergent technology. Bryan also maintains the NITLE Prediction Markets. Committed to exploring computer-mediated pedagogy, he researches and writes on the critical uses of computers and teaching in terms of the interdisciplinary liberal arts and the contemporary development of cyberculture.
Bryan holds a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan and taught English and information technology studies as faculty at Centenary College of Louisiana. Bryan lives up in the Green Mountains of Vermont with his beloved family, many animals, and a great many trees. There he bakes, lifts weights, carries wood, and thinks about movies.
Shirley Alexander
The Gifts Change Brings
The Australian higher education system is about to experience unprecedented change. This presentation begins by outlining those changes, and then builds on the saying that “change always comes bearing gifts” by focusing on the ways in which information technologies present significant opportunities to enhance the student learning experience.
As Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Vice-President (Teaching, Learning and Equity) at the University of Technology Sydney, Professor Shirley Alexander is responsible for leading the achievement of the University’s key priorities in teaching and learning, student focus, and equity and diversity.
Shirley Alexander is Professor of Learning Technologies and has worked at UTS for the past eighteen years, having previously held the positions of Director of the Institute for Interactive Media and Learning, and Dean of the Faculty of Education.
She has an international reputation for her research on the use of information and communication technologies in education. She was a member of the Committee for University Teaching and Staff Development (CUTSD) from 1997 – 1999 and of the Australian Universities Teaching Committee (AUTC) from 2000-2004.
Richard Katz
Monsters, eduPunks, devils, and things that go bump in the night: Reflections of an educational optimist on a sector gone Gothic
The current literature of higher education reads like Mary Shelley’s library. The modern university leader, it would seem, is fighting a pitched battle with all sorts of ghoulies against the backdrop of a gathering storm. They told us that change was hard, but this is ridiculous! Information technology and the profound social changes being wrought by the Net Generation are, of course to blame. So what trends are really worth watching and how might they reshape higher education in the future? Have you looked under your bed lately?
Richard N. Katz is the author, co-author or editor of seven books, four major research studies, and more than 70 articles and monographs on a variety of management and technology topics. His book Dancing with the Devil was deemed one of the 10 most important education-related books of 1999 by Lingua Franca. He received his B.A. from the University of Pittsburgh, and his MBA from UCLA.
Katz was vice president of EDUCAUSE from 1996 until July 2010. From 1996 to 2001, he was responsible for professional development, conferences, information technology, publications, and research. In 2001, he founded the EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research (ECAR), now the largest research service devoted exclusively to IT issues in higher education. Before joining EDUCAUSE, Katz held a variety of management and executive positions spanning 14 years at the University of California (UC). From 1993 to 1996, he led that University’s development and implementation of strategic management initiatives. For this work, he became the second recipient of that University’s Award for Innovative Management and Leadership.
Diana Oblinger
Next Generation Learning
Educators have the opportunity to create the next generation of learning―for the next generation of learners. Today’s learners have almost unlimited access to information, tools, resources, faculty and experts. They are comfortable with information technology and its many applications. Beyond the value of IT in enabling social networks, mobility, telepresence, video, visualization and personal learning environments, IT also catalyzes new models. Educational activities are being unbundled from traditional institutions. This presentation highlights emerging models that will help educators meet the growing need for postsecondary education.
Dr. Diana Oblinger, president and CEO of EDUCAUSE, formerly served as EDUCAUSE vice president responsible for the association’s teaching and learning activities and the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative. Previously, Oblinger held positions in academia and business: Vice President for Information Resources and the Chief Information Officer for the University of North Carolina system, Executive Director of Higher Education for Microsoft, and IBM Director of the Institute for Academic Technology. She was on the faculty at the University of Missouri-Columbia and at Michigan State University and an associate dean at the University of Missouri.
Oblinger serves on a variety of boards such as the National Science Foundation’s Advisory Committee on Cyberinfrastructure. Dr. Oblinger has testified before the U.S. Senate Committee on Employment, Safety, and Training and the U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on Technology.
A frequent keynote speaker, Oblinger is also the co-author the award winning What Business Wants from Higher Education. She is co-editor of seven books: The Learning Revolution, The Future Compatible Campus, Renewing Administration, E is for Everything, Best Practices in Student Services, Educating the Net Generation, and Learning Spaces. She is the author or co-author of dozens of monographs and articles on higher education and technology.
McKenzie Wark
Alice Through the Looking Glass
Just as Alice steps through the glass into a world where things are of strangely variable sizes and shapes, so too when we step into emerging technologies things don’t always have the familiar dimensions. Whether we like it or not, students have already stepped through the looking glass, and are looking back at us, education professionals, wondering why we still use ancient steam powered devices — like email. Nobody can know the future, but we can look closely at what students are actually doing and try to find ways of engaging with their communication and research experiences.
Professor McKenzie Wark is Associate Dean of Eugene Lang College, the New School for the Liberal Arts in New York City.
He is the author of A Hacker Manifesto (Harvard 2004), Gamer Theory (Harvard 2007) and various other things.
In 2008 he collaborated with the Institute for the Future of the Book on a ‘networked book’ version of Gamer Theory, and in 2011 he is collaborating on Betaville, a 3D simulation of downtown New York designed for collaborative design experiments and conversations.
Ken holds degrees from Murdoch University, The University of Technology Sydney, and Macquarie University.
Brad Wheeler
Changing the game
As the Internet drives down coordination and distribution costs at an unprecedented scale worldwide, colleges and universities have the cultural values and scale to change the game to our advantage. The question is….do we have the will to do so or will we be pawns?
Dr. Brad Wheeler is Indiana University’s Vice President for I.T. and CIO. He has co-founded some of higher education’s transformative software and service collaborations including the Sakai Project for teaching and learning software, Kuali for financial and other administrative systems, and the HathiTrust for digital copies of scanned books as part of the Google Book Project. These projects are a blend of both open source and traditional development models that have grown to encompass over $60M of pooled investments from 50 institutions and 22 commercial firms.
He chairs the boards of the Kuali Foundation and Connexions Consortium, and serves as Treasurer for the EDUCAUSE board. He is a professor of information systems in IU’s Kelley School of Business, and has taught executive programs for corporate and MBA audiences on six continents.
