From the Present to the Future of Higher Education featuring Bryan Alexander
Channel: Center for Online Innovation in Learning
Date: 2014-10-17

From the Present to the Future of Higher Education
Originally Held: September 26, 2014

This COIL Fischer Speaker Series event explores the future of higher education by surveying current trend lines. From new technologies to powerful demographics, pedagogical and institutional possibilities, we will seek what’s coming next in the present. During this presentation, Bryan Alexander uses selected trends to build several scenarios of possible university futures, ranging from the dystopian to… better outcomes.

Bryan Alexander is senior fellow at the National Institute for Technology in Liberal Education (NITLE). He researches, writes, and speaks about emerging trends in the integration of inquiry, pedagogy, and technology and their potential application to liberal arts contexts. Dr. Alexander’s current research interests include emerging pedagogical forms enabled by mobile technologies, learning processes and outcomes associated with immersive environments (as in gaming and augmented reality), the rise of digital humanities, the transformation of scholarly communication, digital storytelling, and futurist methodologies.

Dr. Alexander is author of Future Trends in Technology and Education, a monthly report that surveys recent developments in how education is changing, primarily under the impact of digital technologies. Its purpose is to help educators, policy-makers, and the public think about the future of teaching, learning, research, and institutions. Dr. Alexander is also the author of The New Digital Storytelling: Creating Narratives with New Media, published in April 2011 by Praeger. He is active online, combining research with communication across multiple venues and tweets steadily @BryanAlexander.

Born in New York City, Dr. Alexander earned his Ph.D. in English from the University of Michigan in 1997, completing a dissertation on Romantic-era Gothic literature. He taught English literature, writing, information literacy, and information technology studies at Centenary College of Louisiana from 1997 through 2002. He was a 2004 fellow of the Frye Leadership Institute. He lives on a Vermont homestead with his family, where they raise animals and crops, combining broadband with a low-tech lifestyle.

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