Gartner Highlights Top 10 Strategic Technologies for Higher Education in 2016

February 25, 2016

SYDNEY, Australia, Feb. 25 — Higher education leaders have shifted focus from reducing costs and driving efficiencies toward using technology to enhance competitive advantage and support emerging business models — and ultimately, the institution’s main missions of education and research, according to Gartner, Inc.

Gartner forecasts that worldwide higher education sector spending will grow 1.2 per cent to reach $38.2 billion in 2016.

For institutions to thrive in the increasingly competitive education ecosystem, they must become more innovative and it is often technology that will underpin that innovation.

“Higher education is still mostly considered a conservative and slow-moving industry, with the majority of innovation coming from outside the traditional education IT organisation,” said Jan-Martin Lowendahl, vice president and distinguished analyst at Gartner. “However, it is only a matter of time until all this innovation will impact the institution and, ultimately, the CIO.”

Gartner has identified the top 10 strategic technologies for the higher education sector in 2016 and provides recommendations to education CIOs and IT leaders regarding adoption and benefits. “It is not a list of what education CIOs spend the most time or money on, rather it is a list of strategic technologies that we recommend higher education CIOs should have a plan for in 2016,” added Mr. Lowendahl.

  1. Adaptive Learning

Institutions are increasingly looking to adaptive learning to help solve the challenge of providing scalable personalised learning. Adaptive learning dynamically adjusts the way instructional content is presented to students based on their responses or preferences. It is increasingly dependent on a large-scale collection of learning data and algorithmically derived pedagogical responses. It takes two major forms: (1) textbooks, where algorithms are packaged with content from a publisher for an end user; and (2) platforms, where end users add their own content to an adaptive learning environment.

  1. Predictive Analytics

Predictive analytics involves extracting an analytical model from multiple sources of data to predict future behaviour or outcomes. Predictive analytics are seen by higher education leaders as a key part of strategies to improve student success and save money through improved retention. A majority of the higher education analytics tools currently on the market claim to use predictive analytics, but there are relatively few tools that truly implement predictive analytics.

  1. CRM

Customer relationship management (CRM) is now a widely recognised tool for tracking and managing relationships with constituents, including prospective and current students, parents, alumni, corporations, benefactors and other friends of the institution. CRM systems have two primary objectives — automating and improving student-centric business processes, and gathering data to produce analytics to improve institutional decision making. CRM technologies can be implemented to support all phases of the student life cycle — recruitment, enrolment, engagement, retention, alumni, career services and continuing education.

  1. Exostructure

Exostructure strategy means acquiring the critical capability of interoperability as a deliberate strategy to integrate the increasing numbers of partnerships, tools and services in the education ecosystem. When done right, an exostructure approach enables institutions to leverage services from the cloud, rather than having to bring them inside the campus walls. Enabled by standards, it can allow the institution to adapt faster. With the increasing interdependencies in the education ecosystem, Gartner sees it rising in importance for at least the next decade. The future belongs to exostructure rather than to infrastructure.

  1. Open Microcredentials

Microcredentials in the form of various badges or points have existed for some time in digital social environments in general, and in learning environments in particular. A key problem is that these environments are proprietary, which makes it difficult to display achievements outside of them. The aim of open microcredentials is to remedy that problem. For education institutions, issuing open microcredentials is a low-cost, high-value, technology-based capability that will provide more value and motivation to students. Open microcredentials is still relatively immature as a technology, but it is gaining traction in the education community. Gartner sees it as a clear strategic technology with a relatively small investment involved, thereby making it a low-hanging fruit with good ROI.

  1. Digital Assessment

Digital assessment refers to the application of digital technologies to create, administer, report and manage tests and examinations. It is an increasingly important aspect of online learning as it feeds into a number of growing areas such as analytics, adaptive learning, competency-based education and new regimes of scrutiny, transparency and accreditation. Many institutions are making increasing investments in new assessment technologies. Often the impetus for these investments is coming from disparate parts of the organisation, driven by different assessment needs. Assessment tools are becoming a critical aspect of achieving personalisation at scale.

  1. Smart Machines

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 globalisation 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.

  1. 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.

  1. 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. 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 enrolment. 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.

  1. 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 globalised online education ecosystem where many team members are geographically scattered.

Source: Gartner 

Subscribe to HPCwire's Weekly Update!

Be the most informed person in the room! Stay ahead of the tech trends with industry updates delivered to you every week!

MLPerf Inference 4.0 Results Showcase GenAI; Nvidia Still Dominates

March 28, 2024

There were no startling surprises in the latest MLPerf Inference benchmark (4.0) results released yesterday. Two new workloads — Llama 2 and Stable Diffusion XL — were added to the benchmark suite as MLPerf continues Read more…

Q&A with Nvidia’s Chief of DGX Systems on the DGX-GB200 Rack-scale System

March 27, 2024

Pictures of Nvidia's new flagship mega-server, the DGX GB200, on the GTC show floor got favorable reactions on social media for the sheer amount of computing power it brings to artificial intelligence.  Nvidia's DGX Read more…

Call for Participation in Workshop on Potential NSF CISE Quantum Initiative

March 26, 2024

Editor’s Note: Next month there will be a workshop to discuss what a quantum initiative led by NSF’s Computer, Information Science and Engineering (CISE) directorate could entail. The details are posted below in a Ca Read more…

Waseda U. Researchers Reports New Quantum Algorithm for Speeding Optimization

March 25, 2024

Optimization problems cover a wide range of applications and are often cited as good candidates for quantum computing. However, the execution time for constrained combinatorial optimization applications on quantum device Read more…

NVLink: Faster Interconnects and Switches to Help Relieve Data Bottlenecks

March 25, 2024

Nvidia’s new Blackwell architecture may have stolen the show this week at the GPU Technology Conference in San Jose, California. But an emerging bottleneck at the network layer threatens to make bigger and brawnier pro Read more…

Who is David Blackwell?

March 22, 2024

During GTC24, co-founder and president of NVIDIA Jensen Huang unveiled the Blackwell GPU. This GPU itself is heavily optimized for AI work, boasting 192GB of HBM3E memory as well as the the ability to train 1 trillion pa Read more…

MLPerf Inference 4.0 Results Showcase GenAI; Nvidia Still Dominates

March 28, 2024

There were no startling surprises in the latest MLPerf Inference benchmark (4.0) results released yesterday. Two new workloads — Llama 2 and Stable Diffusion Read more…

Q&A with Nvidia’s Chief of DGX Systems on the DGX-GB200 Rack-scale System

March 27, 2024

Pictures of Nvidia's new flagship mega-server, the DGX GB200, on the GTC show floor got favorable reactions on social media for the sheer amount of computing po Read more…

NVLink: Faster Interconnects and Switches to Help Relieve Data Bottlenecks

March 25, 2024

Nvidia’s new Blackwell architecture may have stolen the show this week at the GPU Technology Conference in San Jose, California. But an emerging bottleneck at Read more…

Who is David Blackwell?

March 22, 2024

During GTC24, co-founder and president of NVIDIA Jensen Huang unveiled the Blackwell GPU. This GPU itself is heavily optimized for AI work, boasting 192GB of HB Read more…

Nvidia Looks to Accelerate GenAI Adoption with NIM

March 19, 2024

Today at the GPU Technology Conference, Nvidia launched a new offering aimed at helping customers quickly deploy their generative AI applications in a secure, s Read more…

The Generative AI Future Is Now, Nvidia’s Huang Says

March 19, 2024

We are in the early days of a transformative shift in how business gets done thanks to the advent of generative AI, according to Nvidia CEO and cofounder Jensen Read more…

Nvidia’s New Blackwell GPU Can Train AI Models with Trillions of Parameters

March 18, 2024

Nvidia's latest and fastest GPU, codenamed Blackwell, is here and will underpin the company's AI plans this year. The chip offers performance improvements from Read more…

Nvidia Showcases Quantum Cloud, Expanding Quantum Portfolio at GTC24

March 18, 2024

Nvidia’s barrage of quantum news at GTC24 this week includes new products, signature collaborations, and a new Nvidia Quantum Cloud for quantum developers. Wh Read more…

Alibaba Shuts Down its Quantum Computing Effort

November 30, 2023

In case you missed it, China’s e-commerce giant Alibaba has shut down its quantum computing research effort. It’s not entirely clear what drove the change. Read more…

Nvidia H100: Are 550,000 GPUs Enough for This Year?

August 17, 2023

The GPU Squeeze continues to place a premium on Nvidia H100 GPUs. In a recent Financial Times article, Nvidia reports that it expects to ship 550,000 of its lat Read more…

Shutterstock 1285747942

AMD’s Horsepower-packed MI300X GPU Beats Nvidia’s Upcoming H200

December 7, 2023

AMD and Nvidia are locked in an AI performance battle – much like the gaming GPU performance clash the companies have waged for decades. AMD has claimed it Read more…

DoD Takes a Long View of Quantum Computing

December 19, 2023

Given the large sums tied to expensive weapon systems – think $100-million-plus per F-35 fighter – it’s easy to forget the U.S. Department of Defense is a Read more…

Synopsys Eats Ansys: Does HPC Get Indigestion?

February 8, 2024

Recently, it was announced that Synopsys is buying HPC tool developer Ansys. Started in Pittsburgh, Pa., in 1970 as Swanson Analysis Systems, Inc. (SASI) by John Swanson (and eventually renamed), Ansys serves the CAE (Computer Aided Engineering)/multiphysics engineering simulation market. Read more…

Choosing the Right GPU for LLM Inference and Training

December 11, 2023

Accelerating the training and inference processes of deep learning models is crucial for unleashing their true potential and NVIDIA GPUs have emerged as a game- Read more…

Intel’s Server and PC Chip Development Will Blur After 2025

January 15, 2024

Intel's dealing with much more than chip rivals breathing down its neck; it is simultaneously integrating a bevy of new technologies such as chiplets, artificia Read more…

Baidu Exits Quantum, Closely Following Alibaba’s Earlier Move

January 5, 2024

Reuters reported this week that Baidu, China’s giant e-commerce and services provider, is exiting the quantum computing development arena. Reuters reported � Read more…

Leading Solution Providers

Contributors

Comparing NVIDIA A100 and NVIDIA L40S: Which GPU is Ideal for AI and Graphics-Intensive Workloads?

October 30, 2023

With long lead times for the NVIDIA H100 and A100 GPUs, many organizations are looking at the new NVIDIA L40S GPU, which it’s a new GPU optimized for AI and g Read more…

Shutterstock 1179408610

Google Addresses the Mysteries of Its Hypercomputer 

December 28, 2023

When Google launched its Hypercomputer earlier this month (December 2023), the first reaction was, "Say what?" It turns out that the Hypercomputer is Google's t Read more…

AMD MI3000A

How AMD May Get Across the CUDA Moat

October 5, 2023

When discussing GenAI, the term "GPU" almost always enters the conversation and the topic often moves toward performance and access. Interestingly, the word "GPU" is assumed to mean "Nvidia" products. (As an aside, the popular Nvidia hardware used in GenAI are not technically... Read more…

Shutterstock 1606064203

Meta’s Zuckerberg Puts Its AI Future in the Hands of 600,000 GPUs

January 25, 2024

In under two minutes, Meta's CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, laid out the company's AI plans, which included a plan to build an artificial intelligence system with the eq Read more…

Google Introduces ‘Hypercomputer’ to Its AI Infrastructure

December 11, 2023

Google ran out of monikers to describe its new AI system released on December 7. Supercomputer perhaps wasn't an apt description, so it settled on Hypercomputer Read more…

China Is All In on a RISC-V Future

January 8, 2024

The state of RISC-V in China was discussed in a recent report released by the Jamestown Foundation, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank. The report, entitled "E Read more…

Intel Won’t Have a Xeon Max Chip with New Emerald Rapids CPU

December 14, 2023

As expected, Intel officially announced its 5th generation Xeon server chips codenamed Emerald Rapids at an event in New York City, where the focus was really o Read more…

IBM Quantum Summit: Two New QPUs, Upgraded Qiskit, 10-year Roadmap and More

December 4, 2023

IBM kicks off its annual Quantum Summit today and will announce a broad range of advances including its much-anticipated 1121-qubit Condor QPU, a smaller 133-qu Read more…

  • arrow
  • Click Here for More Headlines
  • arrow
HPCwire