Editorial

摘要

This special issue of the International Journal of Information and Learning Technology provides a snapshot of the current state of research in the field of instructional technology. The technologies and contexts described in these papers echo many of those identified by the 2017 New Media Consortium (NMC) Horizon Reports for Higher Education (Adams Becker et al, 2017) and K-12 (Freeman et al, 2017) as likely to be adopted imminently, or in the medium term, including maker spaces, mobile learning, and learning analytics. Given that the NMC Horizon Reports are often used as a benchmark for identifying technology trends, we can say that research in the field is indeed keeping pace with the changes in the technological and pedagogical landscape of schools and universities. This is important, given that the role of research is to understand how and why technology is currently being used to support teaching and learning, in order to provide guidance for best practice.