The Changing Face of Collaborative Work (and Information Literacy)

The 2008 Horizon Report is out from Educause.  (This is the report I referenced at Loanne's Knowledge Commons presentation, if you were there.)

This report identifies and describes emerging technologies that will have an impact on teaching, learning and creative expression in higher education.  It's definitely worth a read.

Two major points that I took from it:

1)  The nature of collaborative work is changing. 

From p. 4 of the report: 

"Collaboration no longer calls for expensive equipment and specialized expertise. The newest tools for collaborative work are small, flexible, and free, and require no installation. Colleagues simply open their web browsers and they are able to edit group documents, hold online meetings, swap information and data, and collaborate in any number of ways without ever leaving their desks."

This has implications for how we plan future facilities and technology spaces in libraries.  If we build expensive, dedicated spaces for group work, will our students come?  I think that perhaps individual learning styles and group dynamics also will play into students' preferences and usage patterns, but it is a good reminder to keep things (as Henry pointed out) very flexible in the future.

2) Visual, technological and information literacy retain continued (and perhaps redefined) importance.

This portion of the Report especially resonated with me:

"We need new and expanded definitions of these literacies that are based on mastering underlying concepts rather than on specialized skill sets, and we need to develop and establish methods for teaching and
evaluating these critical literacies at all levels of education." (p. 6)

Systematically embedding the explicit teaching of these skills into the curriculum is perhaps the only way to ensure that students have the successfully developed information literacy and technology skills they need.  And libraries (especially instruction librarians) have to integrate the teaching of information literacy and technology skills even more so in the future.