[Market]
As you may take away from what our emerging market team (EMT) has discussed so far in our open educational resource, PL is an extensive market; yet through its spectrum and ambiguity of technologies it remains an emerging field in all that its parts purport in education. However, even when the many subsets of PL demonstrate their usefulness in the field, they individually fall short on meeting a true definition of PL. To get to the height and scale of what PL is famed to do for education, we must consider technologies that support the idea: big data, algorithms, and learning analytics to name a few. So, there is a lot to realize ahead of PL taking center stage in the field of education, where it will stand through its diligence.
The Gartner Hype Cycle Explained
To the right is the Gartner Hype Cycle (Gartner Hype Cycle, 2020). This graph can be used to represent how technologies go through a maturation period before they start showing a period of productivity (Kassarjian, 2019). Technology starts with its foot in the door and holding it open with its innovation trigger. Excitement builds on this innovation until it reaches its peak of inflated expectations, also called "peak hype". It is then a sobering decline into the trough of disillusionment whereby the product is perhaps falling short of expectations. According to the graph, technologies can pull out of this rut and climb up to the plateau of productivity as it regains its initial excitement, but to a lesser intensity as it did during its peak hype.
Gartner Hype Cycle, 2020
The EdTech Gartner's Hype Cycle
If you look at the Gartner Hype Cylce below, it is created to show where certain EdTech industries lie on it. Take a close look and you will notice that PL is not even included (Groff, 2017). However, PL is believed to be near its peak hype (Horn, 2018). Unfortunately, Horn (2018) did not offer a timeline for PL's venture through this graph. Nevertheless, we can attempt to extrapolate PL's performance through Gartner's Hype Cycle's peaks and valleys with the help of what we would consider supporting technologies of PL below. Considering that a few of PL's major supporting innovations have already surpassed their peak hype such as institutional analytics, big data, and adaptive learning platforms we might assume that PL should ease into its future towards its “plateau of productivity” along with these technologies. On the other hand, there are a slew of innovations that PL will need to wait for, and of which are still facing the leeside of their hype crest such as blockchain in education (privacy-based), competency based platforms, and at its peak learning analytics. Therefore, with all this catching up to established and establishing supportive innovations, and waiting for nascent ones according to Gartner’s Hype Cycle, PL may have another five to ten years to step onto its plateau of productivity.
Ed Tech Gartner Hype Cycle. Source: Groff, 2016.
As promised earlier on in our OER, let's return the focus to AI in PL. AI has been an important proponent of many industries such as transportation, communication, commerce, and finance; however, the potential for AI to transform education is found wanting (Woolf, 2013). Woolf (p. 66, 2013) goes on to acknowledge that “AI-based instructional software now routinely tailors learning to individual needs, connects learners together, provides access to digital materials, supports decentralized learning, and engages students in meaningful ways.” This not only reinforces the importance of AI in the development of PL, but pulls in other aspects that will only strengthen PL in the long run, such as peer-peer connectivity, and global giants within the industry (HolonIQ, 2018).
Without a doubt, AI is going to be the driving force behind PL as it will take on the task of the teacher’s assistant (Groff, 2017). However, there are other important aspects of learning that make it personal such as peer-peer connection, and a de-centralization of the education itself. As presented by HolonIQ (2018) in their “Education in 2030 Global Scenerios” education will be a $10 trillion industry. This EMT agrees that PL is based heavily in three of the five scenarios that HolonIQ proposes: Robo-revolution, Peer-peer, and Global Giants. The Robo-revolution would be a champion of the AI in PL. Peer-peer would be the connectivity that PL garners through human interaction. And Global Giants ensure that education is no longer a centralized institution, and rather opens up PL to the global market to provide a truly personalized learning experience.
Below is a network graph developed by HolonIQ (2018). Basically, the way that the network graph works is that is shows connections between the five major scenerios that HolonIQ claim for education in 2030. HolonIQ has taken news articles and expert opinions on the future of education and created a graph showing their connectivity (HolonIQ, 2018). As you can see below, the three major supporters that this EMT believes to be drivers of PL into the future are quite large, and closely connected. This gives this EMT confidence in stating that PL does have a solid footing, even if that foot is just now holding the door open to education in the future.
HolonIQ, 2018