ABSTRACT

This chapter discusses the ideas of experience and engagement, and the features that characterise the digital university. Ideas such as engagement and experience, or discussions about topics such as digital literacy, have been shaped by wider policies and debates about the relationship between universities and society. Research into digital literacies typically takes place within the field of educational technology, which does not have a unifying central theory or approach, and which often engages only superficially with theory. Cultural studies of the digital engaged from an early point with the interrelationships between the digital and virtual. The strong presence of ethnographies in areas such as New Literacy Studies, ANT and digital anthropology fitted well with the commitment to an open and interpretive study. The work in digital anthropology, in particular, showed that ethnographies could take place even where the 'field' defined in relation to digital networks was distributed across physical spaces.