CSS is pleased to announce the resumption of its ‘Talking STS’ series, with a session in which Janja Komljenovic (Lancaster University) will present initial findings from her work on digital assetization in higher education, followed by a response by Lesley Gourlay (UCL) and collective discussion.
The event will take place from 1pm to 2pm on Tuesday June 20th, on Teams. To register and to receive the Teams link, email csslancaster@lancaster.ac.uk
In the presentation, Komljenovic will draw from the ESRC-funded research project analysing edtech companies, investors in edtech, and universities as users of edtech. She will investigate different ways in which assets and their value get constructed and governed. Assets can be understood as resources that bring continuous economic benefit to the owner as a consequence of ownership or control of the asset. In particular, the digitalisation of the HE sector brings new opportunities for creating a diversity of digital assets, such as video recordings of lectures, digital user data as students and staff engage with digital platforms in their teaching and learning practices, and infrastructure for skills matching. These assets are being created through digital platforms used in the HE sector. The question then becomes, what are the technological, legal and economic relations between individual users, universities and platform owners in higher education digital ecosystems; who owns, controls, and uses the emerging digital assets in the digital HE sector; and who benefits economically?
