Abstract
Background: The use of digital technology in higher education is overwhelmingly positively assessed in most recent research literature. While some literature indicates certain challenges in this regard, in general, the emphasis is on an encouragement and promotion of digital technology in higher education. While we recognised the positive potential of the use of digital technology in higher education, we were cautious of an instrumentalist and disembodied understanding of (digital) technology and its potential impact on higher education – as a sector of education and as a body of students.Aim: To re-conceptualise the way in which technology is understood for its use in the higher education sector, as is argued, would be of benefit for transformation in higher education.Setting: South African Higher Education sector.Methods: Phenomenology of embodiment.Results: An embodied understanding of technology through the embodied phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty and an explication of its potential for transformation in higher education via the working concept of the Embodied Screen leads to a full understanding of the student as embodied and socially-embedded individual.Conclusion: A more holistic and embodied understanding of digital technology serves to supplement transformation in higher education, especially if transformation is itself understood in concrete social and bodily terms as is the case in the South African context.
Highlights
In the first part of the article, we present a brief overview of the positive assessment of the use of technology in higher education
An embodied understanding of technology and transformation of higher education As explained above, an instrumentalist understanding of technology has been dominant in the broader field of Philosophy of Technology since the empirical turn as of the 1980s onwards
There are several problems with such a disembodied reductionist approach to technology, for instance: (1) the individual becomes detached from himor herself and others via digital technology; (2) digital technology becomes ‘cold’ and alienating; (3) the personhood and context of the student is ignored; (4) micro-studies on specific technology gets priority and not its broader effect and relationship with the individual; and (5) the individual’s embodied sensemaking of the world and others is not reckoned with
Summary
The use of digital technology in higher education is overwhelmingly positively assessed in most recent research literature. While some literature indicates certain challenges in this regard, in general, the emphasis is on an encouragement and promotion of digital technology in higher education. While we recognised the positive potential of the use of digital technology in higher education, we were cautious of an instrumentalist and disembodied understanding of (digital) technology and its potential impact on higher education – as a sector of education and as a body of students. Aim: To re-conceptualise the way in which technology is understood for its use in the higher education sector, as is argued, would be of benefit for transformation in higher education.
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