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Higher Education’s Top 10 Strategic Technologies for 2016

In the digital age, threats come from all angles
Susan Grajek, vice president of data, research, and analytics at EDUCAUSE.

The introduction and retooling of technologies is a major focus of higher education organizations and budgets. Institutions are introducing new technologies to leverage trends in analytics, mobile, social, and cloud; to respond to risks; and to up their games in recruitment, teaching and learning, student success, and research.

This post provides a snapshot of EDUCAUSE annual report about the Top 10 Strategic Technologies in 2016 colleges and universities are actually planning and implementing, as well as technologies they are tracking.

Trends such as moving to the cloud, data-driven decision making, and personalized learning predominate, but here is more in detail the ranking all Marketing and Admissions leaders should be aware of:

1    Incorporation of mobile devices in teaching and learning
2    Saas – Service as a Software (That’s Gecko!)
3    Administrative or business performance analytics (and we do this!)
4    App development—responsive design, hybrid, … (and that!)
5    Accessing online blended/hybrid courses from mobile devices
6    Mobile apps for enterprise applications
7     Service desk tool and management strategy (and this as well?! Yes!)
8    Learning analytics
9    Data collection & sophisticated analytics methodologies (But we do especially this…)
10  Application performance monitoring (OK..and also that!)

Gecko Labs provides cutting edge technology solutions for colleges and universities globally to help them refine their recruitment and marketing processes – Have a look!

Looking to the future, EDUCAUSE notes that institutions will devote most attention to tracking these technologies: next-gen LMSs, adaptive learning, mobile data protection, use of big data in learning analytics, uses of the Internet of Things (IoT), games and gamification, cloud-based security services, software-defined networks, open educational resources (OERs), and use of big data in institutional analytics.

“Colleges and universities have made significant investments in their physical infrastructure and services over the past several decades to differentiate themselves from the competition and to attract and retain the best students and faculty. Technology now has the potential to offer an arguably even greater value by helping to transform, not the facilities and food, but the very experience and process of learning, scholarship and community.”
Susan Grajek

Full 2016 report will be available to public as of January 2017 on Educause Library.
Read also: Educause – Top 10 IT Issues, 2016
(Source: Educause/eCampusNews)