The Digital Turn in Higher Education Towards a Remix Culture and Collaborative Authorship

Abstract

An ongoing process of media change is affecting and, increasingly, challenging all fields of society (Krotz, 2008). This change has been discussed as an epochal shift leading to a digital age (Hanson, 2014; Nordmann, Radder & Schiemann, 2014). The process in which the structure of media in society is redefined can be termed a `digital turn´. This digital turn is increasingly affecting academia: the university can be viewed as a space of digitalization. Universities propagate inventions which push the digitalization process. But science itself is changing in the course of digitalization. Thus the concept of `e-Science´ describes the increase in digital scientific research and the establishment of digitally based scholarly communications (Buffel, Pleil & Schmalz, 2007; Lang & Zobl, 2013; Heidkamp, 2014). Media change in the academic sector makes new demands on higher education. Higher education has to ensure that students acquire the academic media skills needed in a digital age. According to the goals of the Bologna Process, higher education must ensure students’ employability in the professional world of the digital age. But at the same time, the university is a space for critical reflection on the impact of digitalization. Following Derrida, one can envisage the university as a space of critical reflection and resistance (Derrida, 2002). From this perspective, the university is bound to discuss the shift in which digitalization re-defines the media landscape.