Horizon Project

The Horizon Project is an initiative by the New Media Consortium (NMC) to chart emerging technologies for teaching and learning. Its objective is to help educators and thought leaders across the world build upon the innovation happening at their institutions by providing them with expert research and analysis. It was launched in 2002 by Laurence F. Johnson, CEO of NMC, and publishes several reports online detailing trends in the usage of technology in education.

Since 2005, Johnson has collaborated with Rachel S. Smith in the writing of this report. In 2006, Alan Levine joined the production team, and Keene Haywood joined in 2010. In 2011, Samantha Adams succeeded Smith as the project's lead researcher and writer. In 2011, Horizon Report downloads surpassed the 500,000 mark and worldwide readership approached a million people. The NMC’s landmark nine-years-and-counting study of emerging technology continued with the release of the "2011 Horizon Report" in January 2011. A brand new museum edition was released in October 2010 to the museum community, along with reports for K-12 education and for Australia - New Zealand. The Horizon Project expanded to Latin America in that year, when for the first time, a Horizon research cycle was conducted completely in Spanish. The 2010 Horizon Report: Edicion Iberoamericana was released in July 2010.

Each report is put together collaboratively by an Advisory Board which consists of an international group of educational experts that are selected by-invitation-only. Reports are released with a Creative Commons license (attribution-only) and may be freely replicated and distributed. The Horizon Project reports have been commonly cited at various trending websites and could be used as guidelines in studying trends in the usage of technology in education. Over the past 10 years, various editions of the reports have been downloaded more than a million times.

Like other research projects, the Horizon Project has its fair share of critics (for example, the Higher Ed CIO blog thinks that it is deviating from its original objectives) and supporters (for example the past president of IFEES calls it a "must read"). Various editions of the Horizon Reports are frequently cited by authors of various academic journals and articles. (According to Google Scholar, the 2010 Horizon Report has been cited more than 1000 times.)