Academics wrestling with the dynamic impact of social connectivity to integrate emerging technologies into higher education curricula

Abstract

This article considers how academics wrestle with integrating emerging information and communication technologies (ICTs) into their teaching, and the benefits that they reap as a result. The effective integration of these emerging ICTs into higher education curricula poses a significant challenge for academics to manage the complex interactions that support teaching and learning in higher education. Emerging ICTs create unprecedented opportunities for academics to collaborate on a widespread scale, crossing campus, disciplinary and institutional boundaries to create educational resources and design innovative curricula, yet ongoing effort is required to maximise the potential advantages of those opportunities. This article proposes the authors’ contemporary updating of Latané’s (1981) Dynamic Social Impact Theory (DSIT) in order to assist in explaining the post-2010 reality with which higher education professionals wrestle to reap the benefits of integrating emerging ICT capabilities into their respective higher education curricula. The implications of this connectivity are explored with reference to knowledge management processes, namely how academics deploy ICTs effectively to create, improve, store, use and share aspects of their curricula with students and peers, thereby enhancing teaching and learning outcomes in contemporary universities.