Abstract: Within universities there is a growing trend to apply futures thinking to our teaching and learning, often as a way of understanding how digital shifts are affecting education. This kind of work tends to be characterised by its focus on speculative, big ideas, and by collaborative ways of working which engage with as wide a group of people as possible. At The University of Edinburgh the Near Future Teaching project has taken this approach to design a future for digital education. We have worked with 400 students, staff and other stakeholders to define a set of values and build a vision for a preferred future for our teaching with technology. This presentation will show the approach we used, and then set out a vision and aims for a near future teaching which is community-focused, post-digital, data fluent, playful, assessment-oriented and boundary-challenging. I will also explore some of the key themes we worked with – including the ‘hollowing out’ of the campus, automation of teaching, creativity and diversity – and speculate on the implications of these for how we plan our digital futures.

Qualifications

Biography: Sian Bayne is Professor of Digital Education and Assistant Principal for Digital Education at The University of Edinburgh. She is also Director of Education at the new Edinburgh Futures Institute (https://efi.ed.ac.uk/). She directs the Centre for Research in Digital Education, where her research is currently focused on higher education futures, interdisciplinary approaches to researching digital education and digital pedagogy. More information about her work is on her web site at: http://sianbayne.net