Hello and welcome to my first blog post…

This presentation was given at the ALT Annual conference in September 2021. The session is based on the forthcoming book ‘Critical Digital Pedagogy in Higher Education: Broadening Horizons, Bridging Theory and Practice’ edited by Suzan Koseoglu, George Veletsianos and Chris Rowell. The book brings together a collection of authors who provide a critique of digital learning in Higher Education. A central strand of this book is to recognise that digital learning does not inevitably lead to better learning and that many of the dehumanising aspects of oppression and discrimination are replicated in digital pedagogies. The humanisation of education (Freire, P. 2017), which is free from all discriminatory practices such as sexism, racism, ableism, classism and colonialism, will create more compassionate and critical students who in turn will create a better type of education and a better world to live in. The book aims to give the reader hope and real case studies showing what can be done to create this vision.

Since the outbreak of the global pandemic and the pivot to online delivery of courses in Higher Education, the need to take account of a more critical pedagogy has become even more apparent. The speed of this transition has meant that, in some instances, digital practices have been adopted without a full realisation of their impact on students (and staff) well-being and privacy. The book aims to address these issues and groups the chapters around four themes of Shared Learning & Trust, Critical Consciousness, Change and Hope. These themes challenge the traditional teacher-student relationship and practices in Higher Education. They also give examples of how lecturers are adopting more inclusive practices and improving the digital well-being of their students.

The session will be introduced by one the book’s editors who will give an overview of its content and explain why they think the book is needed at this time. This will be followed by one of the chapter’s authors, Matt Acevedo, who contributed to the book, who will give a brief overview of their chapter and its impact on digital well-being and inclusive practice. Matt will critique the use of digital technologies used in servive of “promoting academic integrety” to create and reproduce the panoptic gaze premised on distrust and surveillance. In the final part of the session the editors will led a Q&A session based on the authors’ talks and the wider concepts occurring within critical digital pedagogy.

By the end of the session participants will be more aware of the themes that make up the broad concept of ‘critical digital pedagogy’. They will also be shown some real examples of digital teaching practices that challenge the dominant teacher-student relationships in Higher Education and be provided with a more liberating vision of what that education could look like.

Freire, P. (2017). Pedagogy of the oppressed. Penguin Books Ltd.