TAMPA, Fla.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Link-Systems International, Inc. (LSI), an educational technology company that pioneered the concept of on-demand, 24/7 online tutoring in 1996, with student-centric eLearning solutions at the core, released today its predictions for key EdTech trends in 2017.
“As an EdTech pioneer with decades of experience and contracts with hundreds of public and private colleges as well as community colleges across the U.S., LSI has a unique long-term view of the education technology market,” said Vincent Forese, president of Link-Systems Int. “Closely aligned with our customers, we feel it is important to identify customer trends in 2017 and how they will affect administrators, instructors and students.”
The following are six key education and EdTech trends LSI expects to have some impact this year:
- College will still cost money, sometimes lots of money. Despite plans floated by several politicians to make college free or to reduce tuition, we don’t expect any to take root this year. And with families willing to take out loans to send their kids to expensive colleges, we don’t see much pressure to reduce tuitions. In-state tuitions at many public and community colleges offer a real bargain compared with private colleges – students are taking notice, but free tuition is a long way off.
- Big data will get bigger, but won’t necessarily improve outcomes, yet. The key word may be “yet.” Big data does not yet deliver on the promise of turning educational data into educational change. Without being able to prioritize the data to get insights, data is just data, and educators won’t learn what to do with it in 2017.
- OER (Open Educational Resources) Textbooks will continue double digit-growth; take significant market share in fall. An attempt to reduce costs by providing openly licensed course materials, including textbooks, OER has grown substantially over the last 15 years – but this year could be a tipping point. Expect OER course materials to gain in popularity while also becoming more professionalized, with peer-review requirements and standards closer to the big publishers than ever before.
- While teachers remain essential to teaching, personalized learning will continue to solve problems, driving greater personal device usage in schools. Electronic devices will be increasingly prevalent in the classroom, providing students with access to content, apps, websites and other information for learning. This will enable teachers to provide better-personalized learning and differentiated instruction on a student-by-student basis.
- VR and AR will get the headlines, but offer very little to improve education. Far from a fad, Virtual and Augmented Reality are still a long way from delivering truly game-changing education. Until the technology improves, VR/AR remains gimmicky when it comes to the classroom.
- Regardless of your feelings about President Trump, education – particularly our resource-starved community colleges – stand to benefit from a strong focus on job growth. Community colleges play an important role in helping students get the education or the retraining they need for 21st century jobs. If the Trump Administration is able to make good on that promise of new jobs and training, we expect the public investment in community colleges will also increase.
About Link-Systems International, Inc. (LSI)
Link-Systems
International (www.link-systems.com)
draws on two decades of innovation to deliver eLearning solutions that
improve student success and institutional effectiveness. LSI partners
value and trust LSI because of a shared purpose: helping students learn.
All LSI solutions are FERPA & ADA compliant. The privately held EdTech
company is based in Tampa.
