#EdTech Challenge Four: Share your vision of the campus of the #FutureofEducation

Jisc’s edtech challenge competition, which opened challenge four yesterday (30 Apr), is asking UK students and apprentices to gaze into their crystal ball and imagine how student life will be in 2030.

Jisc is looking for anyone studying at a school or college in the UK to contribute ideas about how their needs may be better met with emerging or future technology.

For inspiration, let’s hear about some of the ideas explored at Jisc’s Networkshop47 event earlier this month, where a panel of students, staff and education technology experts offered their visions for the future.

They included a vision of an education experience where students will be more connected, using immersive technology and gamification, outlined by Simon Wilson, chief technology officer at technology company Aruba. 

While students’ motivations and aspirations are unlikely to transform significantly in the next 11 years, Wilson said, the tools universities and colleges use to meet them will evolve.

“Ten years is a lifetime in technology,” he told delegates.

Undergraduate Jake Forecast joined Simon in imagining the digitally-enhanced campus of 2030. Placing inclusion and creativity at the heart of his vision, the 19-year-old predicted a change in classroom structure, seeing the end of the ‘teacher talks, students listen’ format and moving to a more collaborative, interactive environment.

Sue Beckingham, principal lecturer at Sheffield Hallam University, felt that every student might have an “intelligent device”, which becomes their personal, interconnected virtual learning hub. This will hold a profile of their academic and personal life, syncing all their work to their tutors, connecting to university services, and linking to their extra-curricular life and their peers. Students will also submit work and get feedback on this device, she said.

Anyone inspired by those visions can contribute their own to the challenge, with the winners to receive a cash prize of £500 and the runners up £50 each.

Sue Attewell, Jisc’s head of change for further education and skills, explains: 

“We’re looking for ideas that could improve the student experience, finding out what matters to young people and where they feel university and college priorities should lie. Participating students and apprentices’ edtech concepts may be innovative and revolutionary, or they may offer practical solutions to help young people study in more flexible, agile ways.”

And there are more opportunities to innovate with Jisc with the launch of edtech challenge five, which is looking for ideas of how to stop students cheating and handing in assignments that are not their own work. But this challenge is open to staff, as well as students, from universities and colleges in the UK.

Enteries close on 20 May 2019.