Digital Scholarship Considered: How New Technologies Could Transform Academic Work

Abstract

New digital and web-based technologies are spurring rapid and radical changes across all media industries. These newer models take advantage of the infinite reproducibility of digital media at zero marginal cost. There is an argument to be made that the sort of changes we have seen in other industries will be forced upon higher education, either as the result of external economic factors (the need to be more efficient, responsive, etc.) or by a need to stay relevant to the so-called ‘net generation’ of students (Prensky, 2001; Oblinger & Oblinger, 2005; Tapscott & Williams, 2010). This article discusses the impact of digital technologies on each of Boyer’s dimensions of scholarship: discovery, integration, application and teaching. In each case the use of new technologies brings with it the possibility of new, more open ways of working, although this is not inevitable. The implications of the adoption of new technologies on scholarship are then discussed.