Future of Higher Education

Gábor Király and Zsuzsanna Géring, directors of FHERC were chairs of a session at STS Conference, Critical Issues in Science, Technology and Society Studies, in May. The online conference-session dealt with the question whether digitalisation in higher education is a revolution which transforms education or means only the change in the transmitting medium of traditional solutions. The session contained 8 presentations with very interesting problems and identified challenges (for details see HERE). Gábor Király’s and Zsuzsanna Géring’s own presentation focused on the purpose(s) of learning in this digitalised context by drawing on two future visions about education from the past. The first vision belongs to Skinner who imagined a fully technologised school where students progress in their own pace in a well-defined, linear sequence of a learning trajectory, their understanding and retention are often tested, they receive immediate and regular feedback from the system. The second vision was elaborated by Rogers who emphasises that real learning (in his definition: learning which leads to positive behavioural change) is always self-directed. Király and Géring argued that educational technologies available today can support the realisation of each of                                                                                                                                                           these visions. Moreover, while these visions do differ in fundamental aspects, there may be ways to                                                                                                                                                        utilise their insight in a complementary manner.