Digitalization of Higher Education - what is changing?

The answer to this question: Everything.

What and how Higher Education is changing, or already has changed, will be explored in more detail by the next of the annual International HER (Higher Education Reform) conferences in Mexico City on Sept 11th to 13th.  For details see https://her2019.cinvestav.mx/

Below a short abstract of some of the themes that will be addressed:

Digitalization and the development of artificial intelligence are fundamental, epoch-making changes affecting every individual and all sectors, activities, and institutions of society. They raise fundamental questions, for example about the future of the state and its institutions, about personal freedom and control, and about the future of work and of learning. Digitalization is thus not a theme restricted to higher education (HE) although higher education is already, or will be in the future greatly affected by digitalization.

Universities are commonly assigned two main missions—research, teaching and learning (a third one,  service to the community,  is seen by many not as a separate “third mission” but as an extension of the former two). How have universities traditionally carried out these missions? How are or will these missions likely be affected by digitization? And what has changed regarding governance and administration of universities as a consequence of digitization?

Administration

In autonomous HE institutions, especially universities, academic activities are managed and coordinated by administrative units. Traditionally, administrative work was decentralized i.e. carried out by the faculties, departments and institutes. The administration has recently become more centralized. This increase of power at the centre rather than at the periphery has several other explanations, yet many functions (e.g. the admission of students, accounting for funding, information about programs and policies) have been facilitated and expanded through digitization. Also, , the digitization of higher education requires new IT infrastructures such as data banks, Internet-based communication systems, and new software for teaching and learning.

 Research

Research has become more important as most countries have understood the close connection of new knowledge and economic development and societal progress. Digitization allows for analysing 'Big Data' which allows collaboration with individuals and groups outside the universities ('Open Science') so that universities are losing their unique role and quasi-monopoly as producers of new knowledge. The dissemination of new knowledge, traditionally done by independent scientific publishers and academic journals is also changing as researchers are starting publishing the methodology and results of their work on Internet-based platforms and blogs which increases the both access and circulation.  

 Teaching and Learning

Academic teaching occurs traditionally  in the form of lectures and seminars,  and student leaning was partly based on individual tuition and dialogue with teachers, and partly on self-learning, mainly from academic writings such as books, scripts and journals. Increasingly, online teaching and learning are complementing and partly substituting for the traditional forms of imparting and acquiring knowledge. In many ways, this benefits the learners as it allows for individual feedback and support of learners and for quality control. On the other hand, the online tool allows for the collection of great volumes of personal data of the learners which could also be used for manipulation and control of student behaviour, not just their learning.

Central to the two mainstream missions are professors who design and conduct research and teach students, as well as students who engage in learning and, at an advanced stage of their studies, participate in their professors’ research or conduct their own research studies. Critics from both groups are concerned about the dangers of digitization and wonder how they can be avoided or controlled.

 Five sets of questions will be of specific interest which will be answered in various ways depending on the situation in different countries:

 1.To what degree have HE institutions already digitized and is further digitization part of their planning? What types of digital infrastructure are in place or planned by single institutions, institutional consortia or specialized bodies that design digital networks and common infrastructure for the HE system as a whole?

 2. What are the objectives of HE digitization (e.g. independent or individualized learning; quality enhancement of teaching; new on-line based ways of collecting and analyzing research data, 'open science', and the efficiency of administration)?

 3. What are the reasons for the reservation/resistance on the part of the professoriate,  students and academic bodies (e.g. the standardized contents and control of student learning; the danger of easy plagiarism and other forms of unethical behaviour, the rise of fake or fraudulent peer reviews and publications).

 4.What are the attitudes and roles of collective academic bodies such as faculty unions, rectors’ conferences, and science councils about potential negative effects of digitalization for academic freedom, open access to knowledge, independent learning, and institutional autonomy?

 5. Do government ministries, independent public bodies such as funding councils, standing ministers’ of education conferences, etc. advocate and push digitization through policies that require, support, regulate or control the digitization in HE? Are there policies in place that aim at protecting professors and students  from potential negative effects?

Comments welcome!