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.
Three long term, ongoing core initiatives support all the activities of the organization. These initiatives are primary strategies for accomplishing the mission of the NMC. In addition, focus area initiatives allow the NMC to deeply explore an area of interest. From time to time, new focus area initiatives may be added or existing ones retired.
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.
The NMC's three core initiatives are:
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 object and visual literacy, and the NMC's first forays into online meetings. The DKI is the impetus behind the NMC Series of Online Conferences and 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.
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 Marcus Arts Education Project, and the MacArthur Series on Digital Media and Learning are all part of this initiative.
For a complete description of all NMC initiatives both past and present, including focus area initiatives, please use the links at the left.
