Guest Editorial: Digital transformations with “Nordic characteristics”? Latest trends in the digitalisation of teaching and learning in Nordic higher education

ABSTRACT

In this introductory essay, we build on the articles in this special issue to provide a novel theoretical framework for the understanding of current and future trends in the digitalisation of teaching and learning in Nordic higher education (HE). We highlight three key elements. Context is critical and should be systematically expanded to include not only the immediate context of the virtual and blended classroom, but also the broader organisational and national contexts within which digital learning takes place. The involvement of individual actors, higher education institutions and national policy-making agencies in the development and implementation of digitalisation policy ideas and practices is also shaped by multiple mediations, which include the mediating role of technology itself, but also of other human, organisational and policy actors, ideas and practices. Finally, digitalisation of HE teaching and learning can lead to a variety of gradual or more radical digital transformations, operating at multiple scales and with multiple potential positive or negative effects. This framework helps put into focus the key question of how to go about searching for a flexible set of “Nordic characteristics” that might affect digitalisation of teaching and learning in the Nordic region, albeit in uneven and diverse ways. While it is too early to provide a systematic analysis of the impact of the rapid digitalisation of Nordic HE teaching and learning spurred by the Covid-19 pandemic, we make some preliminary observations that offer this emerging theoretical framework as a way to assess these trends both before and after the pandemic. © 2020. All rights reserved.