When is a toy not just a toy? When it’s a light source, a communication device, a skill builder and a form of exercise. The Student Needs 2025+ Playing Team has found that toys and games that serve multiple purposes will become the new norm, and college students in 10 years will still be playing, but they will be doing many other things at the same time.
Mike Ivicak, a UH Foresight student and Research Assistant for the Playing Team, says technology will allow “play” to meld with other areas of life. “As the current and future generations of students develop lives that are more technology centric, it makes logical sense that the fusion of play and other functional purposes will merge through technology,” he says. In the near future, games and toys will be a major vehicle for people to connect, learn, and work together.
What does this mean for higher education? One implication is that game-playing skills may become the new test-taking skills–the basics you need to know to access more learning, information, and opportunity.
Check back tomorrow for more on the gamification of all from Cody Clark, Playing Team Lead.
The University of Houston Foresight program is exploring the future of Student Needs 2025 and Beyond for the Lumina Foundation, a leading higher education foundation with a goal of raising higher educational attainment levels from 40% today to 60% in 2025. We are tasked with providing Lumina a view of how student needs are evolving over the next dozen or so years. Put simply, could changes in student needs alter the equation of what higher education will need to providing by 2025 and beyond?
To map the student needs landscape of the future, the Houston Foresight program has assembled a team of two dozen faculty, alums, and students organized around six teams exploring evolving student needs related to living, learning, working, playing, connecting, and participating. We are using Houston’s Framework Foresight process to produce forecasts of student needs and identify the implications and issues they suggest for higher education.
