This collection focuses on the role of higher education institutions concerning datafication as a complex phenomenon. It explores how the universities can develop data literac(ies) shaping tomorrow skills and “formae mentis” to face the most deleterious effects of datafication, but also to engage in creative and constructive ways with data. Notably, the book spots data practices within the two most relevant sides of academics’ professional practice, namely, research and teaching. Hence, the collection seeks to reflect on faculty’s professional learning about data infrastructures and practices.
The book draws on a range of studies covering the higher education response to the several facets of data in society, from data surveillance and the algorithmic control of human behaviour to empowerment through the use of open data. The research reported ranges from literature overviews to multi-case and in-depth case studies illustrating institutional and educational responses to different problems connected to data.
The ultimate intention is to provide conceptual bases and practical examples relating to universities’ faculty development policies to overcome data practices and discourses' fragmentation and contradictions: in a nutshell, to build “fair data cultures” in higher education.
Juliana E. Raffaghelli is a Research Professor at the University of Padua, and an associated researcher at the Edul@b research group of the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya. In the last fifteen years, she has coordinated international research units, networks and projects in Latin America, the Balkans, Turkey and Western Europe in the field of educational technologies. Her work covered the topic of professional development for technological uptake in international/global contexts of collaboration through a socio-technical and post-colonial lens. Recently her research activities explored the emergent manifestations of data practices and artificial intelligence through critical, open and emancipatory pedagogies. She is currently leading the national project “Professional Learning Ecologies for Digital Scholarship: Modernizing Higher Education through Professionalism”. She has coordinated six special issues for international journals and contributed to the field with two books and several research articles and chapters in English, Spanish, Italian and Portuguese.
Albert Sangrà Morer is Director for the UNESCO Chair in Education and Technology for Social Change, and Professor and researcher at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, Department of Psychology and Education. He is a member of the founder team of this university (1994-95), where he also served as the director of the eLearn Center. He has worked as a consultant and trainer in several online and blended learning projects in Europe, America, Asia, and Australia, focusing on implementation strategies for the use of technology in teaching and learning and its quality. He is the former Vice-president of the European Foundation of Quality on E-Learning (EFQUEL), and former member of the Executive Committee of EDEN. He contributes to different academic journals as a member of the editorial committee and as a reviewer. He has published several books on the integration of ICT inhigher education with publishers such as Jossey-Bass, Springer, Octaedro and Gedisa. Recipient of the 2015 Award for Excellence in eLearning awarded by the World Education Congress and EDEN Senior Fellow.
