Tünde Varga-Atkins

Artefacts produced by higher education students in assessment contexts have an inherent problem with disposability. As David Wiley, among others, have argued, assessments often have limited applicability outside of the classroom experience, as they are designed primarily to assist with informing the instructor, grader, or even the student themselves about their progress within their programme or learning experience. Once the assessment process is complete, artefacts produced by students often ‘end up in the garbage can’, and students themselves often (a) realise the futility of expending significant time and effort on a piece of work that is ultimately destroyed (which naturally damages their engagement), (b) cognitively dismiss the work they have done in one context as their attention immediately turns to the next, or (c) a combination of these. Non-disposable assessments are designed to help alleviate this problem. An assessment that is constructed with ‘non-disposability’ in mind is designed to be used in some context beyond the assessment itself. This might include (but is not limited to) publication of the work in another space, or its use as a constituent part within a wider social project, or even as part of another assessment context where the student uses the work they have done in one space to directly inform another. Generative AI (GenAI) technology has the potential to improve the non-disposability of assessments, and this chapter explores how this might be done. The capacity for the technology to both (re)formulate artefacts into multiple semiotic forms (or those that combine semiotic forms into multimodal artefacts), as well as its capacity to act as a ‘critical friend’ means that it can help produce artefacts that have direct use and relevance beyond the classroom itself. For example, GenAI might act as a multimodal-maker/collaborator or assistant, provide feedback as an audience, generate ideas for new forms of information or reformulate existing ones, or directly edit/amend artefacts to change voice, tone, or target audience.

Debates are taking place in the higher education literature regarding the changing roles of learning technology professionals and their contributions to the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL). Whilst much literature discusses motivations and barriers for these professionals in engaging with SoTL, less attention has been directed towards how such engagement might be nurtured and developed. This paper analyses an intervention project designed as a cross-institutional mentoring scheme which aimed to foster SoTL habits and skills in learning technology professionals. The mentor scholar scheme encompassed a series of online group meetings and one-on-one advisor meetings, involving 22 scholars and 18 advisors over a 12-month period. Data was collected using a range of methods including questionnaires and interviews. Our analysis uses Cultural–Historical Activity Theory to grasp the dynamics of the mentor scholar scheme and derive insights into how learning technology professionals attempt to engage with SoTL in their practice. The scheme developed in ways unanticipated by our original design. Key contradictions in the activity were evident through persistent difficulties for learning technology professionals in identifying as a scholar, finding a place within a broader scholarly community, developing a loyalty to scholarship, and positioning it against longstanding professional priorities. Nonetheless, participants viewed the scheme as successful, and we put forward considerable experience of how to mediate and address these issues. The paper contributes new perspectives on catalysing scholarly identity among professional staff in higher education, highlighting the importance of a scholarly community, understanding scholarship as distinct from professionalism, and suggesting that mentoring must be a relational and adaptive process.

It is significant how the concept of Carlyle’s “heroic clear visuality” was challenged by late 19th-century Black Americans. Nicholas Mirzoeff points out two cases: Sojourner Truth’s tactic, “inverse visuality”, and W.E.B. Du Bois’ “veiled visuality”. My paper examines divergent art works or projects exhibited in 2021-22 to track how a shift from “heroic clear visuality” is present in new visual narratives which demand new ways of “looking”. In my view, new works are radical in their claim for a special form of opacity (Glissant): on the one hand, they recommend a more emphatic counter-visual narrative by Indigenous groups (the former anti-heroes). On the other hand, they demand a mode of bodily seeing – or rather sensing – with the represented (of new non-human heroes). (Haraway).

This paper is concerned with the digital practices of professionals, and the ways in which educators can support higher education (HE) students with successfully transitioning into professional life by developing relevant digital capabilities according to their disciplines. Digital capabilities have received significant attention in recent years, with various attempts made to develop digital frameworks to support curriculum design in HE. However, few studies have articulated these generic capabilities in terms of specific disciplines. This paper addresses the gap of disciplinary conceptualisations of digital capabilities by exploring how they are planned in HE curricula in two professional disciplines, engineering and management. Originality of the study is achieved in part through a conceptual framework that weaves together Shulman’s notion of signature pedagogies with JISC’s Digital Capability Framework (DigiCap). The study employed a multiple-case study methodology with each discipline as a case, and four undergraduate/postgraduate modules as the units of analysis, drawing on documentary sources, and academic, professional and student perspectives via interviews and focus groups. The research design section presents a practical manifestation of this conceptual framework in the form interview questions, which is one main outcome of this study. The study offers insight into the digital capabilities in engineering and management education, as well as the digital practices of engineers and managers. Findings report on which digital capability elements are prioritised, and how, in the two professions, followed by a discussion of their most distinct, 'signature digital capabilities'. These indicate that the development of digital capabilities is aligned with the respective discipline’s signature pedagogies. In engineering, digital problem-solving and collaboration/communication, followed by data and information literacy, appear to be most prominent. In management, data and information literacy overlap with problem-solving, and, together with digital content communication, form its prominent digital capabilities. The study also identifies management’s overarching signature digital capability. The paper argues that simply just using a descriptive, typological framework (e.g. DigiCap) is not sufficient to identify signature digital capabilities of a subject without tending to their disciplinary aspects. It is the combination of a typological digital capability framework through the lens of signature pedagogies, which can be effective in identifying disciplinary digital capabilities.

This handbook takes as its starting point the need for a holistic conceptualization of digital higher education which takes into account personal, pedagogic and organizational change. It is tempting not to offer an alternative conceptualization of digital higher education in such a contested space. However, we have been struck, through our reading of the chapters collected together in this volume, of the role of people and practices in shaping digital higher education. A definition grounded in such a way recognizes that educational technologies are tools put to use to meet organizational objectives and that those objectives will inevitably be shaped by the wider political, economic and societal changes. Within this context we have chosen to frame digital higher education as institutional engagement with the social and cultural implications of technology-enabled educational change.

Higher education institutions are concerned with developing graduates who can succeed in today's world where disciplinary knowledge-making practices are predominantly digitally mediated. Few studies exist that have mapped or articulated what digital capability means in a particular subject. Demonstrated through a case study with engineering, this chapter offers an approach through the concept of signature pedagogies to support educators, curriculum designers and institutional leaders to be able to design or review their curricula from a digital capability lens that tends to their specific discipline. Findings point to alignment between engineering's signature pedagogies and digital capabilities, paving the way for articulating 'signature digital capabilities'. Findings also suggest that relying purely on documentary analysis is insufficient as digital capabilities tend to be implicit in learning outcomes. Instead, a dialogue should accompany such analysis, underpinned by the concept of signature pedagogies, shared here in the form of an interview protocol.

During the time of COVID-19 lockdown over spring 2020, universities shifted teaching from on-campus blended learning to an emergency remote fully online approach. The aim of this study was to compare Psychology and Veterinary Science undergraduate students’ academic performance with their responses on a self-reported questionnaire regarding their digital capabilities, individual’s characteristics, and the role of environment on their independent learning process over the first COVID-19 lockdown period. Social-Cognitive Theory was adopted to conceptualise students’ behaviour, individuals’ characteristics, and learning environment with their academic performance to a learning framework. A total of 303 students from both disciplines (133 Psychology and 170 Veterinary Science undergraduate students) participated in this study by completing an online questionnaire after following the teaching shift from blended learning to full remote online approach at a UK University during the 2019–2020 academic year. Differences between students’ responses were identified due to their discipline’s curricular structure, students’ study behaviours (i.e., being exposed to unrelated learning activities), and students’ cognitive effort to think critically in the search, evaluation and managing of digital information. Students with high level of self-regulation and digital capabilities were able to keep focused and engaged during the lockdown. Although universities and teachers were “forced” to shift their teaching approach due to the unfortunate disruption of the COVID-19 pandemic, most students have coped with the changed teaching delivery mode relatively easy with minimum guidance. However, teachers should further consider how digital technologies could enhance students’ learning flexibility promoting critical thinking.