Our first event for 2025 will take place on Thursday, 20 February 2025 from 12:30-14:00 SAST. The HELTASA Digital Learning and Teaching project team is collaborating with the Universities South Africa (USAf) Digital Education Learning and Teaching (DELT) Community of Practice to co-host our next digital dialogue.

We will contribute to a global conversation on the common theme: ‘Problematising education and digital technology’. CSET2025 is a series of academic meetings being held around the world during the same week (February 17th and 21st, week 8 of 2025) on this common theme. A list of CSET meetings being hosted around the world is available here.

The questions guiding the conversation are:

1. What are the pressing issues, concerns, tensions and problems that surround EdTech in our locality? What questions do we need to ask, and what approaches will help us research these questions?
2. What social harms are we seeing associated with digital technology and education in our locality?
3. What does the political economy of EdTech look like in our region? What do local EdTech markets look like? How are global Big Tech corporations manifest in local education systems? What does EdTech policy look like, and which actors are driving policymaking? What do we find if we ‘follow the money’?
4. What grounds for hope are there? Can we point to local instances of digital technology leading to genuine social benefits and empowerment? What local push-back and resistance against egregious forms of EdTech is evident? What alternate imaginaries are being circulated about education and digital futures?

We will summarise the discussion and share it with the global community. Insights will form part of a global report as explained in the video below.

Watch this CSET Introductory Video: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1tfBqq9DxzDtqF9lYbaPt66Tk0SXILshG/view?usp=sharin

The HELTASA Digital Teaching and Learning project team focuses on the nexus between learning and teaching and technology in higher education. It seeks to enhance the quality of learning and teaching in online, blended, and hybrid modes by supporting academic professional learning and supporting scholarly educational technology practitioners.

The DELT CoP serves as a collaborative and supportive network of professionals, academics and other stakeholders within the higher education sector who share common goals and interests relating to innovation and the integration of technology into learning and teaching.

CSET is short-hand for critical studies of education and technology.

While not required to join the conversation, the following articles might be of interest: 

• What is critical in critical studies of edtech? https://www.buzzsprout.com/1301377/episodes/16588168 

• African perspectives: ‘What is critical in EdTech research?’ (2023) https://scielo.org.za/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S2310-71032023000100008
• Global perspectives: What’s next for Ed-Tech? Critical hopes and concerns for the 2020s https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17439884.2020.1694945#d1e190
• Higher education futures at the intersection of justice, hope, and educational technology https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s41239-024-00475-0
• What is ‘critical’ in critical studies of edtech? Three responses https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17439884.2021.1958843#d1e108
• More than tools? Making sense of the ongoing digitizations of higher education https://educationaltechnologyjournal.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s41239-018-0109-y

 More available at https://criticaledtech.com/latest-academic-articles/