Information and digital literacy in education via the digital path

This report profiles key trends and emerging technologies and practices shaping the future of teaching and learning and envisions a number of scenarios and implications for that future. It is based on the perspectives and expertise of a global panel of leaders from across the higher education landscape.

EDUCAUSE is proud to continue the tradition of excellence begun by the New Media Consortium’s (NMC) work on the Horizon Report. The report serves as a reference and technology planning guide for educators, higher education leaders, administrators, policy makers, and technologists.

This year’s Horizon Report has been updated with new features and improvements including Fail or Scale essays revisiting past forecasts to see where we are now, companion data points providing connections to other data that support the expert panel determinations for 2019, and new quotes from expert panel members highlighting their insights and engagement on the issues. Updated topic summaries throughout the report provide a fresh overview of new and old trends.

An increased focus on measuring learning, along with putting more thought into redesigning learning spaces, are two trends with great significance for higher ed in the next couple of years, according to the Horizon Report.

Here are six trends that will have wide-ranging impacts on higher education.

The NMC Horizon Report Preview provides summaries of each of the upcoming edition's trends, challenges, and important developments in educational technology. This work would not have been possible without the efforts of the 71 community members of the 2018 Horizon Expert Panel. These volunteers share a consensus view that each of the profiled topics will have a significant impact on the practice of higher education around the globe over the next five years.

Our spring 2019 report analyses the emerging technologies most relevant to the strategic challenges faced by the sector, with a particular emphasis on mental health and wellbeing.

About this report

Published: 13 March 2019

For more than a decade, EDUCAUSE has partnered with the New Media Consortium (NMC) to publish the annual Horizon Report - Higher Education Edition. Earlier this year, EDUCAUSE acquired the rights to the NMC Horizon project, which identifies and describes the higher education trends, challenges, and developments in educational technology likely to have an impact on learning, teaching, and creative inquiry. EDUCAUSE is publishing this 15th edition to both honor and work actively with the NMC’s Horizon legacy.

Spreading digital fluency is now a core responsibility of academic libraries, and Artificial Intelligence and the Internet of Things (IoT) are poised to amplify the utility and reach of library services like never before. These are just two of the revelations part of the New Media Consortium’s (NMC) University of Applied Sciences (HTW) Chur, Technische Informationsbibliothek (TIB), ETH Library, and the Association of College & Research Libraries’ (ACRL) Annual Horizon Report: 2017 Library Edition.