Dr. Nicole Johnson presents her seminar: Imagining the Future of Education

How do researchers study the future of education—without trying to predict it?

Dr. Nicole Johnson, a leading digital learning researcher, will explore how expectations related to technological change are shaping the current higher education landscape, and how these expectations can be studied systematically.

Drawing primarily on research conducted by the Canadian Digital Learning Research Association, Dr. Johnson will begin by providing an overview of the changes that those working in higher education are anticipating in the near future, with particular attention to areas of tension and uncertainty across the sector. The seminar will then shift from what is being anticipated to how these perspectives are researched.

Dr. Johnson will unpack the methodological approaches used to gather and analyze futures?focused research, situating them within broader methodological traditions concerned with long?term change, technological adoption, and educational transformation. Rather than treating the future as something to forecast, the session highlights how expectations, assumptions, and narratives about change can themselves become valuable objects of research—and indicators of present challenges.

In the final portion of the seminar, Dr. Johnson will focus on application. Participants will be invited to explore how futures?focused approaches can be incorporated into existing projects, inform new research questions, and support more reflective conversations about change within institutions. Time for discussion and questions will be built in throughout, creating space for collective reflection on how researchers might engage more deliberately with the future in their work.