Global Higher Education Sector Technology Spending to Exceed $38.2B in 2016

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Smart machines are an exciting new trend on the list that promises to take adaptive learning and analytics, for example, to a new level that approaches algorithmic education. As globalization and political belief in a market force approach to higher education continues to increase competition, smart machines will be a key differentiator in helping the institution articulate its value, as well as deliver value to a student, leading to building a better brand. Smart machines can be used for analytics, student and faculty advice, as well as in improving research productivity.

8. OER Ecosystem

Open educational resource (OER) ecosystems are pieces of educational content and media that are findable, freely available, and increasingly include tools and services to improve quality and production of open content. The OER ecosystem is not new as such, but is increasing in importance to help drive down costs for students and increase control of educational content and channels. OERs exhibit the five characteristics of openness — that is, users can retain, reuse, revise, remix and redistribute the content freely. CIOs have typically not been closely involved in supporting content used as textbooks or lecture material, but this is changing as the use of OERs expand.

9. Listening and Sensing Technology

Listening and sensing technologies are a broad collection of virtual capabilities that range from social listening and sentiment analysis through capture and interpretation of social activities, such as tweets to technologies that operate in the Internet of Things (IoT). In higher education, the use of social listening tools and social harvesting tools is in a very nascent stage, and when employed, it is most often used to aid in recruiting and enrollment. However, there is potential for it to play a significant role across the entire student journey. However, most institutions are at very low maturity levels with these tools.

10. Collaboration Technology

The need to find people and ideas and communicate and collaborate on a global scale has always been fundamental to the higher education community. Collaboration technology is a sweeping definition of technology that facilitates research, education and outreach effectiveness for a team. It is certainly not a new trend or capability. However, it has increasing importance in a globalized online education ecosystem where many team members are geographically scattered.

More detailed analysis is available to Gartner clients in the report "Top 10 Strategic Technologies Impacting Higher Education in 2016" and the accompanying report "Top 10 Business Trends Impacting Higher Education in 2016." In addition, the report "2016 CIO Survey: A Higher Education Perspective" outlines what higher education CIOs are spending their budgets on.

About Gartner

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