Conceptualising the Digital University The Intersection of Policy, Pedagogy and Practice

Keith Smyth, Bill Johnston, Sheila MacNeill — 2019

Despite the increasing ubiquity of the term, the concept of the digital university remains diffuse and indeterminate. This book examines what the term 'digital university' should encapsulate and the resulting challenges, possibilities and implications that digital technology and practice brings to higher education. Critiquing the current state of definition of the digital university construct, the authors propose a more holistic, integrated account that acknowledges the inherent diffuseness of the concept. The authors also question the extent to which digital technologies and practices can allow us to re-think the location of universities and curricula; and how they can extend higher education as a public good within the current wider political context. Framed inside a critical pedagogy perspective, this volume debates the role of the university in fostering the learning environments, skills and capabilities needed for critical engagement, active open participation and reflection in the digital age. This pioneering volume will be of interest and value to students and scholars of digital education, as well as policy makers and practitioners.

Reviews

Bryan Alexander@bryanalexander

Jul 29, 2021

Conceptualising the Digital University is a mixed bag of a book about higher education and technology. It offers some good insights and comes from a political stance I find congenial, but is also repetition and weakened by too much theoryspeak. On the good side, Paulo Freire is the book's presiding genius., invoked throughout. CDU wants to reform the academy along the lines Freire attempted in his theory and practice: democratic, critical, skeptical, oriented on empowering those without power. This leads to one of the authors' views of technology: as a way to engage universities with the non-academic community and marginalized voices within academia (49). That leads in turn to their call for a "porous university":which values open engagement in the sharing and development of knowledge, where formal boundaries are fragmented and intersect, and through which the opportunities for learning, teaching, scholarship, and research are distributed and co-located across communities within and beyond the institution. (167) They have a good critique of some ways we acculturate technologies within the academy. First, the process tends to conform with neoliberalism. Second, that the changes often tweak or adjust curricula and pedagogy without "challenging and disrupting those processes, or identifying and developing additional or alternative practices that can enrich and evolve higher education, and extend higher education as a wider public good." (69) There is a strong emphasis on democratic, collaborative production of learning and knowledge. And the authors describe practices I like, such as calling for educationalactivities that engage students with the discipline, with each other, and with the wider world in ways that are authentic, creative, meaningful, and, wherever possible, impactful on the wider world... (139)Overall, some good points are contained in this book.