Skip to content

Where's the digital?#

Paraphrase from Ella Kahu

We don't need to talk about technology. It's 2022. Technology is everywhere.

ASCILITE's aspiration is to be

recognised internationally as Australasia's foremost community for the use of digital technologies in tertiary education.

But the consideration of "digital technologies" appears to be limited at times.

For example, the first keynote drew on Glazier's (2021) suggestions for building human connections online:

  1. Humanize the instructor
  2. Provide personalized feedback
  3. Reach out to students
  4. Support student peer collaboration

Pretty good, but those suggestions seem to apply regardless of whether you're using digital or online technologies to build human connections.

Another example on the first day were the 6 principles for digital learning innovation (Adachi et al 2022):

  1. Create a safe place for new ideas
  2. Keep focused on your purposes.
  3. Keep focused on your users.
  4. Be ethical.
  5. Start small and build up.
  6. Think holistically

These seem likely to be as useful as principles of innovation for QANTAS or McDonalds. Nothing here to provide specific advice on either digital innovation, learning innovation, or digital learning innovation.

This observation isn't intended to limit the value of these principles as useful guides for the practice of digital education or education more broadly. Instead, I'm wondering if at ASCILITE - given ASCILITE's aspirations - there should be more explicit engagement with digital technologies? Perhaps questions like if/how/why etc. the use of digital technologies in tertiary education complicates, aids, hinders etc the building of human connections or innovation (and many more).

Without at least some focus on these types of questions, I wonder how ASCILITE differentiates itself from HERDSA and its commitment to "the advancement of higher and tertiary education"?