Stephen Downes

As promised, Tony Bates has tallied a number of predictions for 2013 and beyond, each with probabilities attached. Some of them are vague and probably ("online learning starts to become a core activity", "hybrid learning... which I mean the re-design of courses to integrate the best of online and campus-based teaching"), some of them are unsuprising ("the evolution of MOOCs: the trough of disillusionment") and some of them are pretty niche ("online learning increasingly appearing as strategic initiatives within institutional plans"). I think the more significant predictions concern outsourcing ("some institutions outsourcing all or a significant part of their online learning activities to organizations such as Academic Partnerships, Pearson or its subsidiaries, or 2U") and open textbooks.