Recently, I had the opportunity to sit down with Dr. Shane Mountjoy, Provost at York College. Shane is an innovative leader and provided great insights into the importance of identity, mission, and innovation for small liberal arts colleges and universities.

Catastrophic events like the COVID-19 virus are incredibly disruptive in education but they also provide the necessary constraints for positive, systemic change in the future.---Education is fairly insular and generally resists excessive innovation and disruption from the inside. Events such as the Coronavirus, however, can accelerate innovation and disruption.---Companies are constantly coming up with new products and manufacturing ideas to address changing markets. What might education lear...

Seeing how Sherpa guides have begun disrupting the lucrative Mount Everest climbing business should make us wonder what would happen in education if others in the traditional supply chain decide to take on different roles, or the rules of the system change dramatically?---In spite of our good intentions, through our attempts to group students by performance level or skill, we may unwittingly create one more education scenario of separate by unequal.---TEL Learning joins the ranks of OER provi...

In the coming decade, advancements in AI will make it difficult to know whether you are talking to a real person or an AI, in what language a video was originally recorded, or who or what actually assembled and edited the information you’re reading. This, in turn, means big challenges for education.---Everybody loves a good list, especially when it comes to predictions about future trends. In this episode, Rob takes a look at five possible eventualities for higher education by the end o...

What can education learn from online dating and e-commerce platforms? Simplicity and reduced friction. Making education easy to access and easy to use is an important key to success in the coming decade.---We’re seeing a good, three-pronged strategy for market disruption in the food industry. New methods of production, new methods of distribution, and new merchandising. How will existing education institutions respond and/or adapt?---A recent report on mobile web traffic by SimilarWeb reminds...

These days, any popular apparatus or device is a good candidate to become a content and services channel. We’ve seen it with computers, smartphones, and cars. Not surprisingly, we’re seeing the same trend evolve with high ed institutions, as their local infrastructure is being transformed into a powerful channel to reach new audiences across the globe.---Perceptual illusions occur everywhere, including nature, art, and education. As humans, we are susceptible to them because we generally insi...

Welcome to "Education and Technology Futures," a podcast that highlights interesting trends and connections in the worlds of education, technology, and culture. In this inaugural episode, Rob takes a look at five BIG challenges facing education in the coming decade.---It’s awfully easy these days to find yourself looking up and asking, "With all the changes, what has really changed?" In other words, “What’s really new in all the new stuff?” Is the coming decade one where we’ll see real innova...

My early thinking about successful web and web-based game design and has definitely shaped my philosophy regarding successful learning environments. More specifically, I believe that successful learning spaces — virtual and physical — should be interactive, and community-building.But what do we/I mean by interactive? In this episode, I identify four key ingredients for interactivity in learning environments and discuss their significance with regards to the student experience.