Academic work, like many other professional occupations, has increasingly become digitised. This book brings together leading scholars who examine the impacts, possibilities, politics and drawbacks of working in the contemporary university, using digital technologies. Contributors take a critical perspective in identifying the implications of digitisation for the future of higher education, academic publishing protocols and platforms and academic employment conditions, the ways in which academics engage in their everyday work and as public scholars and relationships with students and other academics. The book includes accounts of using digital media and technologies as part of academic practice across teaching, research administration and scholarship endeavours, as well as theoretical perspectives. The contributors span the spectrum of early to established career academics and are based in education, research administration, sociology, digital humanities, media and communication.

This book explores college students’ lived experiences of using digital technologies for their academic work. Access to and use of digital technologies is an integral aspect of higher education in the twenty-first century. However, despite the tech-savvy image of them propagated by the media, not all college students own and use technology to the same extent. To ensure that students have the best opportunities for success, all in higher education must consider ways to increase affordances and reduce barriers in student technology use. This book explicitly examines urban commuter students’ use of digital technologies for academic work, on and off campus.

"This book focuses on the institutionalization of technology into education, specifically, discussing the integration of technology (and new techniques) into various areas of higher education"--Provided by publisher.

Nowadays, technology affects practically all activities in our life. The new digital technologies have permeated economy markets, politics, our workplaces, the ways we communicate with each other, our home activities, as well as operation of all levels of education from kindergarten to doctoral studies. The new technologies challenge higher education institutions world-wide to redefine their student constituencies, their partners and competitors and to redesign their research infrastructures and teaching practices. These multiple contrasting trends, and the visible gap between some sweeping expectations echoed in the 1990s as to the immense impacts of digital technologies on higher education environments and the actual reality, are discussed in this book.

Written by and for instructors from a variety of disciplines, this book presents evaluations that the contributors have implemented in real-life courses, spanning blended and distance learning, flipped classrooms, collaborative technologies, video-supported learning, and beyond.

Digital Technology and the Contemporary University examines the often messy realities of higher education in the ‘digital age’. Drawing on a variety of theoretical and empirical perspectives, the book explores the intimate links between digital technology and wider shifts within contemporary higher education – not least the continued rise of the managerialist ‘bureaucratic’ university. It highlights the ways that these new trends can be challenged, and possibly changed altogether. Addressing a persistent gap in higher education and educational technology research, where digital technology is rarely subject to an appropriately critical approach, Degrees of Digitization offers an alternative reading of the social, political, economic and cultural issues surrounding universities and technology. The book highlights emerging themes that are beginning to be recognised and discussed in academia, but as yet have not been explored thoroughly. Over the course of eight wide-ranging chapters the book addresses issues such as: The role of digital technology in university reform; Digital technologies and the organisation of universities; Digital technology and the working lives of university staff; Digital technology and the ‘student experience’; Reimagining the place of digital technology within the contemporary university. This book will be of great interest to all students, academic researchers and writers working in the areas of education studies and/or educational technology, as well as being essential reading for anyone working in the areas of higher education research and digital media research.

This book is about how technologies are used in practice to support learning and teaching in higher education. Despite digitization and e-learning becoming ever-increasingly popular in university teaching settings, this book convincingly argues instead in favour of simple and convenient technologies, thus disrupting traditional patterns of learning, teaching and assessment. Michael Flavin uses Disruptive Innovation theory, Activity Theory and the Community of Practice theory as lenses through which to examine technology enhanced learning. This book will be of great interest to all academics with teaching responsibilities, as it illuminates how technologies are used in practice, and is also highly relevant to postgraduate students and researchers in education and technology enhanced learning. It will be especially valuable to leaders and policy-makers in higher education, as it provides insights to inform decision-making on technology enhanced learning at both an institutional and sectoral level.