Digital Scholarship Considered: How New Technologies Could Transform Academic Work

TLDR

Digital and web-based technologies are rapidly transforming media industries through infinite reproducibility at zero marginal cost, and higher education may be compelled to adopt similar changes for efficiency and relevance to the net generation. This article examines how digital technologies impact each of Boyer’s four dimensions of scholarship—discovery, integration, application, and teaching. The authors discuss the implications of adopting new technologies for scholarship, exploring how these tools could reshape scholarly practices across the four dimensions. The study suggests that while digital technologies offer the potential for more open and collaborative ways of working, such transformations are not guaranteed.

Abstract

New digital and web-based technologies are spurring rapid and radical changes across all media industries. These newer models take advantage of the infinite reproducibility of digital media at zero marginal cost. There is an argument to be made that the sort of changes we have seen in other industries will be forced upon higher education, either as the result of external economic factors (the need to be more efficient, responsive, etc.) or by a need to stay relevant to the so-called "net generation" of students (Prensky, 2001; Oblinger & Oblinger, 2005; Tapscott & Williams, 2010).This article discusses the impact of digital technologies on each of Boyer’s dimensions of scholarship: discovery, integration, application and teaching. In each case the use of new technologies brings with it the possibility of new, more open ways of working,although this is not inevitable. The implications of the adoption of new technologies on scholarship are then discussed.Keywords: internet; digital technology; technology in education; social media; higher education; Web 2.0