The Digital Academic - Critical Perspectives on Digital Technologies in Higher Education
Balázs Zsigmond Horváth
Abstract
How bumpy are the online lives of university lecturers?Scientific work, like many other intellectual occupations, is becoming increasingly digital.This book summarises essays by leading scholars examining the implications, opportunities, social and political circumstances and notions of working in a contemporary university setting in light of the emergence of digital technologies.Contributors of the chapters form a critical perspective focusing on the impact of digitalisation on the future of higher education, how technology affects scientific publication protocols and university employment conditions, the day-to-day work of researchers, and ways of communicating with students and colleagues.Innovations in scientific practice have an impact on education, research administration and trigger the formulation of new perspectives.The writings present the views of professionals with expertise in education, research administration, sociology, digital humanities, media and communication.We first get a summary of a controversy sparked in August 2016 concerning an article on The Guardian's online site criticising the internet habits of university lecturers.The writing undermined the raison d'être of community profiles of educators for being an unworthy form of communication relative to university goals.This is controversial because the development of electronic mail also stems from university research, and since the introduction of mobile computing, WiFi and cloud computing, the university sector now provides opportunities for scholars from different geographic regions to communicate instantly with each other, with university staff and students and with other out-of-campus connections as well.Although modern computer technologies have gradually emerged and become widespread in academia over the past thirty years or so, relatively little research has been done on how educators use digital advances in their work.The main question is, what are the broader social, cultural and political implications and contexts of technology use?In the following chapter, it is discussed that students must become experts in research practice during PhD applications.They must produce a well-founded thesis that demonstrates that they contribute to scientific knowledge.