Slides from presentation at #oer18 conference, 19th April 2018. https://oer18.oerconf.org/sessions/open-practice-and-praxis-in-the-context-of-the-digital-university-1912/

1. Open practice and praxis in the context of the
Digital University
Bill Johnston, Sheila MacNeill, Keith Smyth #OER18

2. What is the ‘Digital University’? And what might it be?
“We need to be able to articulate an
understanding of what universities are for
that is adequate for our time”
Collini, 2017

3. Our work todate -unpacking the Digital
“digital” = complex code word
Digital university = an impoverished concept/discursive
construction
Go to www.menti.com and use code: 57 20 54

4. Problematic Expectations and definitions
“Digital is here and it’s here to stay”
(PWC, 2018)
“The digital university is not a place,
technology or way of thinking. The digital
university is simply what teachers and
students do in the digital age.”
(Jandric and Peters, 2018)

5. Key constructs and Matrix: early discursive constructs
Key constructs

6. Reflection and moving forward
● Discursive, reflective, practice based experience
● Edinburgh Napier, GCU, Dundee, MacQuarrie
● Revising and extending the matrix
● Critical reflection = book

7. Critically discursive process
“Critical pedagogy locates discursive
practices in a broad set of interrelations,
but it analyzes and gives meaning to such
relations by defining them within particular
contexts constructed through the operations
of power as articulated among texts, teachers
and students”
(Giroux)

8. Critical Pedagogy and openness
“With institutions of public and higher education
increasingly under siege by a host of neo-liberal and
conservative forces, it is imperative for educators to
acknowledge Freire’s understanding of the empowering and
democratic potential of education.”
(Giroux)

9. Critical Pedagogy and openness
“Educators and other cultural workers need a new political
and pedagogical language for addressing the changing contexts
and and issues facing a world in which capital draws on an
unprecedented convergence of resources - financial, cultural,
political, economic scientific, military and technological -
to exercise powerful and diverse forms of hegemony.”
(Giroux)

10. Key AREAS OF FOCUS AND INTERSECTION
● critical pedagogy/praxis/value pluralism
● Openness, porosity as alternative to neoliberal dispensation.
● Academic labour process, metrics
● Digital Participation/Access/Inclusion.
● Open practice as alternative to neoliberalisation
● Information literacy & other literacies.
● Agency
● Personhood
● Nature of learning spaces & learning environments.
● Patterns of learning.
● Digital scholarship; Research & Enquiry
● Binaries.
● Pedagogy & personal development

11. Revised matrix

12. Digitally distributed curriculum
First our original thinking...
And then where we’re at now, based on our reflections on
critical and public pedagogy, and revision to the matrix...

15. Conceptualising the digital university:
The intersection of policy, pedagogy and practice
● Visioning the Digital University
● The Digital University – an Impoverished Concept
● The Myth of Digital Transformation
● Exploring the Digital University - Developing
and Applying Holistic Thinking
● Deconstructing the Digital University
● Digital Participation and Open Communities
● Digital Capability and Individual Agency
● Digitally Enriched Learning Spaces
● The Digitally Distributed Curriculum
● Reimagining the Digital University
● An Extended Conceptual Matrix for the Digital
University
● Institutional Practice and Praxis
● Academic Development for the Digital University
● Advancing the Digital and Open Education Research
Agenda

16. Thank you
Refs:
Collini, S. (2017) Speaking of universities. London:
Verso
Giroux, P. (2011) On Critical Pedagogy. Bloomsbury
Peters, M.A. and Jandric, P. (2018). The digital
university: a dialogue and manifesto. Peter Lang
Publishing.
Contact Info:
Keith Smyth: @smythkrs,
Keith.Smyth@uhi.ac.uk
Sheila MacNeill: @sheilmcn,
sheila.macneill@gcu.ac.uk
Bill Johnston,
b.johnston@strath.ac.uk