Education International
Research recommendations The creation of alternative imaginaries of HE should be informed by previous and new research. We recommend that critical lines for further inquiry should include: — Detailed studies of key actors in the expanding global HE industry, seeking to understand their funding and revenue generation models, their visions and aspirations for the future of the sector, and the ways they attempt to materialise such imaginaries in technical development, marketing, and customer relationship management. — Critical analyses of the expanding role of global technology corporations in HE, such as Alibaba, Amazon, Google and Microsoft, inquiring into their business models in the education sector, their data processing and privacy policies, and their institutional effects on customer or partner organisations. — Empirical field studies of educational technologies in action in HE, interrogating the ways edtech reconfigures important functions of teaching and administration, such as the shaping of pedagogy according to technical templates and the assessment of students through in-built data analytics. — Comparative policy analyses of emergency multisector policy arrangements and their impacts, such as the ways national or regional ministries of education utilise expertise from international organisations, and how consultancies work with governments to develop strategies and policies supportive of digital transformation in HE. — Media and discourse analysis of the production of HE imaginaries across sectors including business, government, consultancy, and the press, articulating and comparing the construction and presentation of different HE futures, their intended audiences and impacts. — Studies of the effects of online learning on student experience, utilising large-scale quantitative survey data and qualitative interviews and focus groups to elicit detailed, contextualised accounts of the impact of digital education on students.
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