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Call for Chapters: Digital Transformation and Disruption of Higher Education
October 31, 2020
This is an opportunity for those who have been involved in technological education particularly to contribute to a very relevant book project.
Dear Centre for Higher Education Research,
My name is Andreas Kaplan, Rector of ESCP Business School in Berlin, and I am currently editing a book on the “Digital Transformation and Disruption of Higher Education” (to be published by Cambridge University Press).
The call for book chapters (see attachment) might be of interest to your members/ followers? So I was wondering if you were willing to diffuse the Call for Chapters among them?
For some time now, (higher) education has been subject to a series of fundamental challenges, such as an increase in competition world-wide, a decrease in financial resources and (public) funding, as well as a more general questioning of its broader societal role and overall mission (Pucciarelli and Kaplan 2019; Kaplan 2014). In addition, higher education’s digital transformation is currently underway; some even speak of its digital disruption. Considering the acceleration of the sector’s digitalization due to the recent Covid-19 health crisis, this edited book intends to shed light on the digital transformation and potential disruption of higher education.
In 2012, the New York Times proclaimed the year of the MOOC (Massive Open Online Course; Kaplan 2017), explaining that online courses delivered on platforms such as Coursera, edX, and Udacity would disrupt the higher education sector (Kaplan and Haenlein 2016). So far, this has not been the case. Already back then, universities worldwide pointed to the fact that education requires far more than learning theoretical content, and referred to other activities like networking, certification, career service, and social events. Indeed, a decade ago, very few presumed that MOOCs could replace these aspects of higher education – but nobody said that they are not replaceable by other means, either. In particular, EdTech (educational technology) start-ups increasingly entered the landscape of higher education, augmenting and even replacing universities and schools in certain of the aforementioned areas.
Due to this digitalization, new teaching formats have arisen. Adaptive learning powered by artificial intelligence (AI) serves as one example. Program curricula and course content are influenced by society’s digital transformation and in consequence they may evolve toward the acquisition of competencies and skills (Kaplan 2018) as opposed to the learning of pure knowledge. The Internet has developed several ways to nurse one’s network outside of the university with, e.g., LinkedIn often said to have become any alumni association’s biggest competitor. EdTech companies are increasingly replacing universities in their role as career centres and first point-of-contact to potential employers, even challenging them in their role as sole provider of official degrees and certification bodies (Kaplan 2020). These are just some examples of how digitalization may transform, or even possibly disrupt, the higher education landscape.
This book’s intention is to bring together the analyses and insights of researchers and scientists worldwide, but practitioners are also more than welcomed as chapter authors. All types of contributions are considered, ranging from real-life case studies to best practices, conceptual papers, empirical studies, literature reviews, and the like. This book aims to analyse higher education’s digital transformation from a holistic point of view and provide a balanced and critical account of the sector’s digitalization, emerging educational technology, its impact, opportunities as well as challenges, and to showcase a wide variety of opinions and viewpoints.
Contributor guidelines:
If you are interested in contributing a book chapter, please send a two-pager with a proposal for your intended chapter to [email protected] by October 31st, 2020. Each proposal will be reviewed along the following criteria: (1) Expected contribution, (2) clarity and feasibility, and (3) fit with the tentative chapter outline and further proposals submitted. You can expect a decision on whether you will be invited to submit a full chapter at the latest by November 15th, 2020.
In your chapter proposal, you should clearly state (1) the type of chapter you would like to write (e.g., case study; conceptual piece; empirical study; literature review; etc.), (2) where in the tentative chapter outline (see above) your work would fit best (e.g., changes in teaching content), and (3) what your contribution will be with respect to the edition’s intent.
If your proposal is accepted, your full chapter will be expected by February 28th, 2021. Chapters should be approximately 25-35 manuscript pages (all inclusive) and conform to APA style. All chapters will go through a review process upon final decision.
Intended readership includes the field’s research community, the leadership teams of universities and higher education institutions worldwide, investors and EdTech (educational technology) actors, teaching professionals and employees within the sector, but also the broader public interested in (higher) education’s future.