Jan 01 2012

NYIT Experts Predict Trends for 2012

Old Westbury, N.Y. (January 1, 2012) – Facebook serving as an enormous job fair… family dinner plates brimming with pureed beans… teachers who assign “homework” for the classroom – those scenes await Americans in the New Year. That is the prediction, at least, of experts in education, health care, employment, and other fields in New York Institute of Technology’s annual forecast for the future.

Here are the trends leading scholars foresee in 2012: 

Educational Technology
“Some new education models are moving away from the traditional notion of the teacher as the deliverer of content and moving towards engaging students through the joys of discovery. The “flipped classroom,” for example, reverses the usual order of common instructional activities – lessons and homework. Using educational technology, such as online tutorials and interactive online videos, students get their classroom lessons after school at home and do what was considered “homework” at school under the guidance of their teacher. These students often find it easier to focus on new lesson material at home without class distractions, then get specific help in class while doing their assignments. Some early studies show a lower incidence of discipline problems in class, and increased test scores.”
Michael Uttendorfer, Ed.D., Dean, School of Education

Health Care Apps
“As doctors and hospitals move to electronic health records, social media already has user-friendly apps that remind patients of doctors’ visits and medication, doses and times.  The larger medical community will face pressure to catch up with this phenomenon."
Patricia Chute, Ed.D., Dean, School of Health Professions

Healthy, Balanced Lifestyle
“Americans, facing increased evidence of disappointing benefits and possible risks of dietary supplements, will return to eating whole foods. That means more fruits, vegetables, whole grains, beans, nuts, and less high-fat animal protein and sugar-laden processed food. More and more, nutrient-dense pureed fruits, vegetables, and beans will replace high-fat, low-fiber components as ingredients in prepared foods.”
Mindy Haar, Ph.D., RD, CDN, Director, Interdisciplinary Health Sciences and Clinical Nutrition, School of Health Professions.

New York as a Tech Hub
“Leading businesses will rely on university resources and talent – faculty and students – to incubate ideas, expand research initiatives, and perfect new products and technologies for commercialization. As a result, New York will grow further as a tech hub, with engineers and computer scientists leading the way.”
Nada Marie Anid, Ph.D., Dean, School of Engineering and Computing Sciences

Social Networking and Job Searching
“The use of social networking to connect employers to job-hunters will continue to expand.  Job boards on LinkedIn, Facebook, and elsewhere are increasingly attractive to employers because they offer inexpensive ways to post openings and keep track of talent.  Applicants need to develop savvy in data mining in these areas and other job aggregators.”
John Hyde, Dean, Career Services

New Forms of Creativity
“The next epic breakthrough in expanding human potential could come from “artificially augmented creativity.”  It uses artificial intelligence to bolster the human creative process. It deals with the spaces between computational analysis, the arts, cognitive psychology, and philosophy. The convergence of two or more random events or things into a new idea is often associated with the creative process. We are on the verge of artificially measuring potential success of random juxtapositions; then we can figure out the types of juxtapositions that produce the most fruitful new creative ideas. This will change how we view, and harness, the creative process.”  
Frank Mruk, AIA, RIBA, Associate Dean, School of Architecture and Design

 
Led by President Edward Guiliano, NYIT is guided by its mission to provide career-oriented professional education, offer access to opportunity to all qualified students, and support applications-oriented research that benefits the larger world. To date, 89,000 graduates have received degrees from NYIT. For more information, visit nyit.edu.

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