This study uses a sociomaterial critical posthuman paradigm to examine possibilities, constraints, and tensions that come into view in the 'intra-action' between teachers and a digital environment. It considers how teacher subjectivities may be reimagined in new digitised visuospatial environments. This qualitative study utilises reflective…

The COVID pandemic highlighted the increasing deployment of digital technologies in educational institutions, defined as 'edtech'. The most visible edtech was video conferencing software, but a swathe of edtech startups have sought to roll out their products and services to educational institutions. We focus specifically on the deployment of…

Whilst technology may have been the 'saviour' of HE from the immediate challenges of the pandemic, the opportunistic dialogue emerging in response is imbued with notions of the pandemic as a catalyst for change. Empowered by the apparent success of technology's deliverance, the door has been opened to unprecedented investment into a pervasive and…

Using the Foundations for All (FFA) project as a frame for broader discussions of minimal computing, this paper explores education for displaced populations in Uganda and the role technology has in that education. FFA (2018-2022) was a collaboration designed to develop and implement a blended bridging programme for refugee students to participate…

Given the central role of digital devices and screens in academic work, their use and our relationship to them are under-theorised in mainstream research into digital education. The COVID-19 pandemic, however, rendered the use of digital screens central to life in 'lockdowns'. This paper will consider the relationships between digital screens and…

Technology has dominated discourse on the future university and how digital technologies disrupting wider societal activities can be leveraged in higher education. To gain an insight into UK institutional perspective on technology adoption in teaching and learning and visions for the future, two corpora of text are analysed: Teaching Excellence…

Citations are valuable capital in the academy as the number of citations is the most frequently used indicator in evaluating the quality of papers, journals, researchers, and universities. Thus, the characteristics of highly cited articles (HCA) have become a common research topic but the approach has been mainly descriptive with no profound…

This article undertakes a critical appraisal of learning design and its relation to ethical ideas of care. We give an account of three personae of near future learning designers, developed using speculative methods, seeded with real-world data comprising job advertisements and validated with learning designers. The personae illustrate conflicts…

Automation is becoming increasingly common in higher education. This is generally posed around accepting large number of students while seeking to keep faculty numbers static and casualising an already fragmented academic labour market. Much of this automation is positioned around perceived gains (efficiency, time, cost) and learning…

Through analysis of the relationship between neoliberalism, learner subjectivity, and flexible education, this paper examines the freedom said to be enabled by flexible education. It asks: What is the nature of such freedom, who does it make free, and in what ways? While flexible education is often framed to be liberatory in nature, especially…

Captured under the umbrella term Open Education, a wide range of educational initiatives has been popping up in the educational landscape. This study aims to offer empirical ground for understanding how Open Education introduces new forms of education. It does so by focusing on one initiative, namely the Interactive Open Online Courses included in…

This paper presents an analysis of the conceptualization of massive open online courses (MOOCs) by major influencers in Chinese higher education. Using critical discourse analysis, predominantly from university resources, a map of the discursive construction of MOOCs is presented and interpreted. The centralized orientation of decision making in…

Scholars in the field of educational technology have been calling for robust use of social theory within learning technology research. In view of that, interest has been noted in applying Giddens' structuration theory to the understanding of human interaction with technology in learning settings. However, only few such attempts have been published…

This paper examines the online marketing of digital technologies in education from three multi-national technology corporations' websites focusing on both the language used in the text and the nature of the accompanying images. Through a content analysis, the paper shows the ways in which the need for technology investment is rationalised. It also…

Through evaluating dominant MOOC platforms created by Western universities, I argue that MOOCs on such platforms tend to embed Western-centric epistemologies and propagate this without questioning their global relevance. Consequently, such MOOCs can be detrimental when educating diverse and complex participants as they erode local and indigenous…