ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book examines how the digital is discussed and used in Higher Education and looks in particular at how these discourses and ideologies position students, lecturers, scholarship, knowledge and ultimately the university itself. It proposes an alternative perspective on student engagement in the digital university, one which takes as its starting point the actual day-to-day practices of students – in other words, what students actually do in their scholarship, reading and writing in terms of interaction with digital and analogue technologies. The book looks in more detail at how the digital has been conceptualised in mainstream discourses of Higher Education, in particular focusing on how digital technologies have been hyped and claimed to have the potential not only to change but also to transform Higher Education.
