Digitalisation in higher education

An artificial tree with various symbols related to digitalization.

Digitalisation affects all people and society as a whole. It also gives us new opportunities to disseminate and validate knowledge, develop the content of our study programmes, refine teaching methods and meet the need for lifelong learning. Digitalisation in higher education is in full swing and affects all study programmes.

Key concepts

Digital transformation is when digitisation and digitalisation have become so widespread and developed that our previous patterns of behaviour and our ways of thinking about and understanding the world around us are fundamentally changed.

Digitisation is when analogue work is transferred into a digital environment. Physical paper is transformed into digital documents and information previously organised in binders and filing cabinets is sorted into digital folders or administrative systems.

Digitalisation is when ways of working and processes are changed with the help of new digital technology. Digital texts are evolving into something other than analogue – they can be multimodal and also contain audio or video files, interactive images and embedded links for further reading. The conditions for communication are changing, with news media allowing readers to communicate in real time with journalists and subject matter experts in comments sections.

The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the technological development and digitalisation of society and higher education. It gave us new experiences, new terminology and new ways of thinking about and approaching work, education and learning.

Society is being transformed

As digitalisation represents a major transformation of society as a whole, it also affects people's values, attitudes and behaviours. It creates new conditions for social interaction and redefines the meaning of an inclusive society.

The labour market is also undergoing fundamental changes. Old professions are disappearing and new ones are emerging at a rapid pace. We are in a paradigm shift which, for the first time in history, means that understanding the effects of development is a greater challenge than developing the technology itself. Technological developments also bring with them a rapid increase in globalisation, making it increasingly difficult to make reasonable predictions about how these changes will affect cultural, economic and social life.

The role of higher education

Digital literacy is an essential condition for people to participate in and understand the society of today and tomorrow. Those who are not familiar with digital tools and services risk being marginalised. Higher education has an important role to play here.

Digitalisation affects the content of all programmes, as we need to address digitalisation issues regardless of the subject area in which we work. Examples of questions from different subject areas are:

How can neuropsychology help in the development of digital tools and services to make them accessible and inclusive?
How should medical records be written so that they are transparent to the patient via the 1177 healthcare information system?
How are society's power structures affected by a changing digital media landscape?
How can teachers prevent bullying and exclusion when social relations have moved online?
How does economic policy work in a society with a data-driven economy?
Higher education is also responsible for the research that helps us understand the impact of digitalisation on individuals and society – knowledge that enables us to meet the challenges of society.

In higher education, we educate and develop the skills of those who develop the digital solutions of tomorrow and those who will use these solutions in their professions. This means that higher education institutions are an important agent of change in a digitalised society. Higher education is responsible for the research that helps us understand the impact of digitalisation on individuals and society and provides a foundation for addressing societal challenges.

Digital literacy

Many attempts have been made to define the general competences that are important prerequisites for the personal and social development of individuals, for employment opportunities, and for participating in and keeping up with the development of a dynamic and rapidly changing society. John Dewey did so already in the late 19th and early 20th century when he concluded that the production of knowledge in science was both broad and rapid. Thus, knowledge should be perceived as something preliminary that can soon be replaced by new knowledge. So what knowledge is important and sustainable?

Digital competence is one of the EU's eight key competences for lifelong learning. It means being able to use digital tools and services, search for information and communicate through digital channels. Digital literacy is a broader concept that encompasses several of the EU's competences and relates to

reading and navigating multimodal texts
media and information literacy
communication, collaboration and participation
digital identity, health and safety: being able to address the challenges and risks that can arise in digital environments, such as privacy issues and cybersecurity
understanding and reflecting on the ethical and legal aspects of digital use
interculturality and social understanding
critical thinking and ability to evaluate
readiness to face changes in working life
digital creativity and innovation

Both concepts, digital competence and digital literacy, are continuously changing at pace with societal developments and could be described as an ongoing process within the individual. The different concepts of knowledge and skills related to digital technologies reflect a very changing landscape.

Getting started with the integration of digitalisation

We have provided some suggestions on how to go about integrating digitalisation into your programme. You can find both information and support materials on the How to integrate perspectives in your programme page.

Agency for Digital Government (DIGG)

Thematic discussions

Here are two possible thematic discussions that can be used in teaching by linking them to key questions, perspectives and approaches for the subject or programme the students are studying.

Digitalisation and the view of knowledge

Pedagogy – the understanding and knowledge of the conditions for teaching and learning – is shaped by changes in society. Today's society is often described as a knowledge society, information society or perhaps a communication or IT society, and Sweden as a knowledge nation. In the context of education, the concept of knowledge is central.

Knowledge can be understood and explained in several ways. Knowledge is made up of the parts “know” and “create”, which means that we can see knowledge as something creative, arising from and rooted in the individual.

Another way of understanding knowledge is that it can be the result of a process. Research contributes new knowledge, and that knowledge can be documented and preserved and thus exist independently of the individual. This knowledge is not rooted in the individual, but is instead understood as something objective, and a controversial question in today's society is whether there is a clear dividing line between knowledge and information. As early as 1979, the French philosopher Jean-Francois Loytard argued that knowledge would increasingly, in line with the technological development of society, become software and, accordingly, have a market value.

Nowadays, the production of goods and services is more knowledge-intensive, and the development of information technology has contributed to a dramatic increase in the amount of information and the number of channels through which information is provided. The speed at which information travels and the distances it travels have also increased.

A central element in the discussion of knowledge is the question of the instrumental value of knowledge in relation to its intrinsic value. In the humanistic Bildung tradition, knowledge is considered a prerequisite for the individual's understanding of life, i.e. knowledge has an intrinsic value for the individual and the individual's personal development. From a political and economic perspective, knowledge acquires an instrumental value and becomes an investment and a market commodity.

Reflection and discussion questions:

How can we define knowledge in relation to information?
Is the consequence of societal development that we see a division between education for societal and economic development and Bildung for personal and cultural development?
What risks can we see in letting the economy and technology control the content and design of education?
How does digitalisation affect the conditions for education and learning?

Digitalisation and interculturality

Today, we have frequent contact with both the media and private individuals from different parts of the world on a daily basis. We also have a large movement of people in the world, with labour immigration and emigration and refugee flows affecting demographics. These developments mean that we need to be able to put our own reality in an international context, and we need to develop knowledge and understanding of other cultures and how they interact with the individual and society.

There is an important difference between the terms multiculturalism and interculturalism. The term multiculturalism describes the existence of many cultures within the same nation or geographical area at the same time, but they can exist side by side and even be isolated from each other. Multiculturalism can thus be understood as a state of things. Interculturality, on the other hand, implies an interaction or conjunction of some kind between cultures. In an encounter between cultures, something happens, they influence and affect each other in a mutual exchange, and it is what happens in the encounter that the term interculturality encompasses. The term interculturality was first introduced by UNESCO in 1974.

Based on our own cultural horizon, we make several assumptions about other cultures. We more or less unconsciously categorise factors such as behaviours, appearances and opinions based on what we perceive as normal and what is deviant. In our encounters with other cultures, our feelings are very important, as are our values. Feelings towards other cultures and how we value foreign cultures are based on our previous experiences. This means we need to be aware of what has influenced our preconceptions and what has shaped our perceptions.

We also have our own cultural identity, i.e. how we perceive ourselves and our own culture in relation to others. Our feelings play a very important role in identity formation. We like to perceive and think about our identity and culture as a way of belonging – being part of a “we”. Within our own cultural group, we have a sense of what is right and wrong, what is the norm and what deviates from the norm. Deviant values and behaviours are often associated with negative feelings that are at risk of being intensified if the deviation is perceived as large or too difficult to understand.

While cultural identity can have a significant positive impact on individuals, it also carries the risk of conflict both within and between cultures. Cultures evolve and change by people and with people over time and in interaction with other cultures in a rapidly changing society.

When moral conflicts arise, there is a risk that we will resolve them by justifying negative behaviours such as creating scapegoats, contributing to discrimination or hatred and strong divisions between us and them.

Working with interculturality in education is a prerequisite for a well-functioning, multicultural and democratic society and for peace and cooperation in a global world, where interaction across cultural and national borders takes place daily.