Overview of NMC Initiatives

As part of its ongoing research, the NMC identifies areas of potential impact in teaching, learning, and creative expression. Each of the initiatives that guide the activities of the NMC centers on an unanswered question of broad application to the NMC community. Within each initiative, the NMC employs four strategies designed to tease out the relevant issues and find ways to address them. These strategies are to convene people around ideas; to catalyze dialog and discussion; to build community and engage people; and to contribute to the field in the form of publications, demonstration and other projects, and information archives.

Each of the NMC’s major initiatives is supported by activities based on one or more of these strategies. As the landscape of technology and higher education changes, new initiatives are developed; and as new ideas become established and part of general practice, the older NMC initiatives that investigated them are retired. This sampling of three of the NMC’s eight current initiatives illustrates some of the range of the NMC’s current work:

Dynamic Knowledge Initiative

How can technology drive the formation of new knowledge, expand dialog, and fuel the exchange of ideas?

At the center of this initiative are the NMC's values of collaboration and community, and the activities within it cut across the full scope of the NMC's efforts. The Dynamic Knowledge Initiative (DKI) began several years ago with an exploration of social computing and the tools that could support it, and was greatly informed by the work of Douglas Engelbart. Early efforts included extensive literature reviews on topics like learning objects and visual literacy, and the NMC's first forays into online meetings. The DKI is the impetus behind the NMC Series of Virtual Symposia, as well as the extensive online social networking tools that are at the center of the NMC's website and its growing community in the virtual world of Second Life.

Emerging Technology Initiative

How can the NMC and its members keep abreast of emerging technologies that may be important to our collective work?

This initiative focuses on identifying and understanding promising emerging technologies, with the goal of applying them to the creative process and to learning. The initiative is designed to stimulate systematic thinking about the future and its possible impacts, and is a fertile source of new ideas and major projects for the organization, several of which have themselves emerged as NMC initiatives. The Horizon Project is the centerpiece of the Emerging Technology Initiative, and its most visible product, the NMC's annual Horizon Report, has become one of the most widely read publications in higher education, with a readership in the tens of thousands every year. In 2008, the NMC introduced several new Horizon Projects focused on specific program areas, including Horizon.au, which will focus on emerging technologies and their impact on education in Australia and New Zealand through a uniquely regional lens and Horizon.Museum, which will consider the role of emerging technologies on museums. In 2009, the NMC will add another Horizon Project focused on K-12 education.

New Collaborations Initiative

How can we leverage the work of learning organizations outside our usual spheres to inform and enhance our own work and reach new audiences?

This initiative encourages cross-sector idea sharing as a way to stimulate new projects, new partnerships, and new ways of thinking within the NMC and its partners and affiliates. As part of this initiative, the NMC looks for "fellow traveler" organizations and ways to leverage the work of such organizations with ours, using a broad frame in that analysis. Among the impacts of this approach have been new member categories and programs for museums, research centers, and foundations, as well as formal linkages with organizations like ECAR, ELI, CNI, MERLOT, CATS , the Digital Storytelling Institute, and Global Kids. Projects like Pachyderm, the Edward and Betty Marcus Digital Arts Education Project, the MacArthur Series on Digital Media and Learning, and the Making Steve Easy project are all part of this initiative.

To learn more about these and other NMC initiatives, please use the links at the left to explore.