A1: Identifying and Responding to Emerging Technologies

Understanding whether new or emerging ideas will be thwarted or become embedded when subjected to the "acid test" of the real world that is the educational system - and also the perpetual change of technology use - relies on an understanding of the patterns of cause and effect in that system.

This session, which will be facilitated by members of the JISC Observatory team at UKOLN and CETIS, will use a mixture of group exercises and discussions to understand potential enablers and disenablers of emerging new technologies. Having developed a better appreciation of how new technologies may or may not be adopted can help to develop appropriate strategies for preparing institutions - and members of the institution - for exploiting innovative developments in an appropriate and effective manner.

The session will explore how such approaches can be used for developing strategies for innovations which have become mainstream in recent years - such as mobile access and the social web - as well as provide an opportunity for participants to identify other developments which may be as yet under the radar'.

By the end of this session you should:

• Be aware of approaches which can help in identifying emerging technology developments through detection of 'weak signals'.
• Have explored ways in which 'weak signals' which may be significant can be differentiated from unsustainable 'fads'.
• Have used these approaches to identify key areas of which may affect the provision of institutional web services or other areas of relevance to participants.
• Have seen ways in which these approaches have been used in others areas of JISC Observatory work.