Throughout the pandemic, and even before, university leadership has frequently come under fire for making poor decisions about Digital Education. Need to close campuses because of lockdown? Just do a three-hour Zoom lecture! Exams? Remote proctoring will solve the problem of cheating!
Those of us who’ve worked in the field for many years, even decades, can find it frustrating that those at the top making the decisions about Digital Education don’t appear to know much about what it really means to teach and learn online, and may be all too easily influenced by private vendors who promise quick-fix solutions to what are, in fact, very complex problems. As one Head of Digital Education said not so long ago “90% of my job is convincing my President NOT to spend the money!”.
- Is a crash course in educational technology really what university rectors need? If not, then what?
- Maybe we need to rethink the whole way in which university leadership is organised?
- But universities are notoriously resistant to change, so what’s the point?
No need to register, just join us by clicking on the button below on Friday 26 February from 16:00 to 17:00 CET to talk about these and lots of other questions!
Meet our moderator Deborah Arnold
Deborah has three decades of experience in the field of education and training, holding teaching and managerial roles in both the private training and higher education sectors. From 2012 to 2018 she was head of the educational technology and distance learning department at the University of Burgundy in France and led the education strand of the institutional digital strategy. She currently works as national and international projects coordinator at AUNEGe, the French digital university for economics and management, and is completing a PhD on the topic of digital education leadership in higher education at Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC).
A bilingual British-French dual national, Deborah is renowned in Europe for her leadership of innovative transnational digital education projects. From 2010 to 2016 she served on the Executive Committee of EDEN (European Distance and E-learning Network) and held the position of Vice-President Communication. She is a Senior Fellow of EDEN, a member of the Board of the EDEN Fellows Council, and serves on the board of the Media and Learning Association. She has recently co-authored a chapter with Albert Sangrà on Digital Education Leadership Development for Strategic Change in Higher Education in the book Educational Leadership: Perspectives, Management and Challenges (ed. V. Wang).
