Digital technologies in universities: problems posing as solutions?

One of the more niche recommended ‘must-reads’ of 2012 was Richard Hil's ‘Whackademia’. Billed as a ‘scathing insider exposure’ of contemporary higher education, this book has garnered considerable critical and popular acclaim over the past six months or so. Drawing on in-depth interviews with mostly anonymous academics, at first glance ‘Whackademia’ appears to contain little that other university ‘insiders’ have not long been shouting from the rooftops. Indeed, the book presents a rather drawn out account of working conditions within increasingly corporatized and bureaucratized universities. Much time is taken detailing the ‘drudgery’ and excessive ‘busyness’ that arises from a world of ‘inputs, targets, key performance indicators, performance management, unit costs, cost effectiveness, benchmarking, quality assurance and so on’ (10). Seen in this light, the university emerges as a ‘joyless institution’ staffed by ‘remunerated zombies’ who have been depowered and demoralized through relentless ‘over-administration’. While descriptions such as these may well surprise readers outside higher education, they will be all-too-familiar for anyone working within it.

Yet, where ‘Whackademia’ might interest even the most jaded of academic readers is the extent to which this malaise appears to have pervaded everyday life within the university sector – debasing even the most mundane working processes and practices. In this sense, I was especially struck by the manner in which digital technology – traditionally associated with a brighter, cleaner future – featured in the dispirited accounts of Hil's interviewees. Computers, email, the worldwide web, online learning systems and mobile phones were all described at various points throughout the book as exemplifying the worst aspects of working within contemporary universities. For instance, the recent infusion of teaching and learning technologies was described as supporting largely a ‘formulaic, googlised, dumbed-down education’ (9). As one interviewee described it, the mandatory use of virtual learning environments and PowerPoint led almost inevitably to ‘mechanical’ modes of pedagogy – ‘you put up the slides, put your lecture notes online … so that your arse is covered’ (101). Of course, most interviewees acknowledged the pressure to deploy in-class ‘technological pyrotechnics’ to engage students and thereby boost their all-important end-of-course evaluations. However, this was accompanied by an underlying sense that technology was diminishing the quality of teaching and learning. For example, some teachers and tutors implied that the unquestioned requirement for word-processed assignments was helping undeserving students produce written work that was just-the-right-side of acceptable.

Digital technologies also appeared to weigh heavily on the research and administrative lives of academics – especially in terms of the ‘bleed’ of professional life into the domestic sphere. Hil's interviewees bemoaned having to ‘frantically labour’ at home and in the office – ‘seven days a week … glued to computer screens’ (48). Particular scorn was directed towards the digital ‘ghost work’ of any lecturer's duties – ‘the routine, unacknowledged bits of the daily grind’ (167) such as answering emails, completing electronic workload formulas, and grappling with online administrative systems. At one point in the book Hil details the electronic ‘form proliferation’ within one of his previous places of employment – listing requisite online permission forms for actions ranging from booking flights, requesting leave, and having alcohol on university premises (173). One theme that emerged throughout all these examples was the self-responsibilized and self-accountable academic worker – the common bottom line to any individual demand being that the solution was to be found ‘on the system’ (106).

Thus, it was telling that the most prominent uses of digital technology within Hil's account involved the symbolic (re)presentation of individual universities within the cut-throat higher education marketplace. Early on in the book, Hil spends time reflecting on the role of the internet as a now indispensible tool in propelling various university messages and slogans ‘slap bang in the middle of a very public domain’ (58). Wry amusement is found in the clumsy use of institutional websites by marketing departments desperate to ‘sell the hallowed university brand’. As Hil describes it, one of the most significant uses of the internet in higher education is for the propagation of hollow propaganda, commercial double-speak and ‘market ejaculations’ – all key means of ‘luring prospective student shoppers’ (63). Similarly, the conspicuous displays of on-campus technological prowess is described as a particularly cynical form of symbolic capital – little more than ‘techno-erotica’ intended ‘to appeal to the tech-head’ students (and their parents) ‘more impressed by gadgets than actual intellectual content’ (66).

Of course, in taking stock of this catalogue of digital woes, one has to remember that university academics are notoriously hard-to-please. The default state of most academics is ‘disgruntled’ – be it in relation to the quality of their staffroom coffee or the state of global politics. Yet, even if Hil's book does contain more than its fair share of professional whinging, it nevertheless raises some legitimate but seldom-voiced questions about universities and digital technologies. How, for instance, could digital technologies that supposedly promised a freer and fairer higher education apparently have had the opposite effect? What happened to pre-millennial expectations of the cyber-campus and seamlessly ‘blended’ learning? How did these wonder technologies get embroiled so quickly in the most obstructive and constraining elements of the university machine? Alongside these awkward questions, the one-sided view of digital technology presented in ‘Whackademia’ also foregrounds the need to consider what – if anything – can be done to resist these developments. For instance, what instances of digital technology use can be found in universities that buck these pernicious trends – that is, that are genuinely enabling and empowering for those that use them? How could the use of digital technologies in higher education be ‘otherwise’?

These, then, are the questions that need to be asked of the technological ‘solutions’ that are currently being touted around higher education – not least recent enthusiasms for an ‘iPad for every student’, ‘flipped classrooms’ and ‘massively open online courses’. Hil's book reminds us that none of these recent ‘solutions’ are likely to alter substantially the wider failings of university life. So, rather than continuing to wait in vain for the great technological leap forwards, it is perhaps more sensible for academics to begin to pay serious attention to what kinds of digital technology might be of genuine benefit to them. Instead of struggling with the over-hyped, pre-configured digital products and practices that are being imported continually into university settings, a genuine grassroots interest needs to be developed in the co-creation of alternative educational technologies. In short, mass participation is needed in the development of ‘digital technology for university educators by university educators’. Only then might the ‘disruptive’ and democratizing possibilities of digital technology in higher education that are so often promised stand a chance of actually being realized in practice.