Digital higher education: a divider or bridge builder? Leadership perspectives on edtech in a COVID-19 reality

Abstract

The edtech community has promoted claims that digital education enhances access, learning, and collaboration. The COVID-19 pandemic tested these claims like never before, as higher education systems seemingly overnight had to move teaching online. Through a sequential mixed-method approach, we investigated how 85 higher education leaders in 24 countries experienced this rapid digital transformation. Through their experiences, we identified the multiple and overlapping factors that contribute to an institution’s ability to realize the potential of digital education, in terms of access, learning and collaboration, whilst highlighting deeply rooted inequalities at the individual, institutional and system level. Drawing on these empirics, we put forth recommendations for closing the digital divides and pathways forward. Higher education leaders are uniquely positioned to move beyond the emergency adoption of online learning towards inclusive, long-term visions for digital education, which emphasize collaboration over individual gain.

Impact of digital technologies upon teaching and learning in higher education in Latin America: an outlook on the reach, barriers, and bottlenecks

“…7 , 8 ; Tables 5 , 8 , 9 , Appendix 2 ) as the main challenges to effective use of digital technologies for teaching and learning across the different HEIs in LATAM. Interestingly, the aforementioned challenges we have found also aligns with the barriers, and set of 33 obstacles found in the recent study of Laufer et al, 2021 , and Mercader and Gairín ( 2020 ), respectively.…”

“…Therefore, with those findings, this current study believes that entering a “digital transformation” will require specialized support from an institutional level or perspective that provides adequate equipment and training for the so-called stakeholders (teachers, students, staffs, etc.) (Boninger et al, 2019 , 2020 ; CONECTA, 2021a ; Cuban, 2020 , 2021 ; Laufer et al, 2021 ; OECD, 2015 , 2021 ; Okoye et al, 2021 ; Raza, 2019 ). Likewise, it is recommended to consider public policies that allow the HEIs to have access to funds specific to the acquisition of educational technologies and network infrastructures to meet those identified challenges or barriers (LALA, 2020 ; Selwyn, 2021 ; UNESCO, 2021a , c ).…”

“…Additionally, due to dire economic straits prevailing in the low-tech settings, some countries may fail to afford the costs related to procurement and deployment of digital devices such as laptops, computers, mobile phones, tablets, and internet subscriptions for teaching and learning purposes (Parliamentary Office of Science & Technology, 2006 ; Swarts & Wachira, 2010 ). Henceforth, addressing the digital divide or gap factors (Laufer et al, 2021 ) is critical to fully transform the largely wobbling education systems, into a digitally-aided and enabled one that supports the teaching–learning processes.…”

On the digitalisation of higher education in times of the pandemic crisis: techno-philic and techno-sceptic attitudes of social science students in Crete (Greece)

“…Often techno-sceptic views underestimate the challenge of integral pedagogy in the digital era. This perspective presupposes pedagogic approaches that create awareness of existing inequalities in higher education, employing technologies as means to enhance access to education, to improve learning achievement and to make space for collaborating experiences and interactions, reintegrating the body and embodiment into digitalised learning (Aroles and Küpers 2021 ; Cocquyt et al 2019 ; Laufer et al 2021 ).…”

Leading in Changing Times

“…A growing body of literature is also emerging on leadership in the overlapping fields of e-learning (Miller & Ives, 2020), online learning (Fredericksen, 2017), digital transformation (Miller, 2019), and educational technology more generally (Arnold & Sangra, 2018). Moreover, there is evidence of border crossing between this literature and key lessons for leadership in higher education arising from the COVID crisis (Laufer et al, 2021). A detailed review of this literature is beyond this chapter, but there has been a general trend over the past two decades to placing greater attention on microleaders, the role of middle-out leadership, and developing more distributed models of institutional leadership.…”