Impact of Digital Technology Use for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education

Introduction

Humanity resides on planet Earth with ambitious goals to mitigate unprecedented social, economic, health, well-being, and environmental challenges. Education, science, technology, and innovation play their role in managing these unthinkable challenges. In particular, higher educations are essential to improving the quality of life of people, given their great relevance in making economic and social decisions, their capacity to increase employment opportunities and their contribution to social exclusion (Lipka, ForkoshBaruch, & Meer, 2019). Some other issues dominating strategic thinking in higher education institutions’ operational activities. These issues need to include (i) inclusion of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) students in higher education, (ii) providing the opportunity for disabled students for higher education, (iii) removing barriers for low-income family's student to get the opportunity of higher education, and (iv) the many meanings of quality education (Unterhalter, 2019).

Higher education can usher in economic changes and improve living conditions by increasing productivity, reducing social inequality (Unterhalter et al., 2022), and helping to improve living standards. For example, people with disabilities and students in low-income families, despite the efforts that educational institutions are making (e.g., making policies, disability support offices, staff training) to achieve success. However, despite the commitment to ensure higher education access for students with disabilities, the dropout rate in this group is still high (Veitch, Strehlow, & Boyd, 2018). Several studies, such as that by Cotton, Nash, and Kneale (2017), have reported differences between countries and institutions in this dropout rate.

In this way, higher education institutions continually look for student-centered effective teaching and learning methods to enhance students' satisfaction and improve the global performance criteria to gain a competitive advantage. It is worth to remember that technology can be a tool to enable teachers to support learners with a diverse range of backgrounds, skills, capabilities, languages, and impairments. However, the use of technology in higher education institutions is based on the interrelationships amongst at least three areas: technology, theories of learning, and educational teaching and learning practice issues. This interrelatedness implies dynamic relationships where the changes in one area make other areas change. For example, technological developments call for the reconceptualization of learning theories and changes in the designs of educational practices. The challenge for teaching in higher education is ensuring that the learning environment institutions provide best helps the learners to learn.

Recent technological developments have produced a new generation of computer, information, and communication technology-based learning environments. There are, to a significant extent, characterized and conditioned by such mobile and portable devices as smartphones, laptops, and desktop computers with wireless broadband access. As a result, there is a need for educational approaches to teaching and learning in higher education that consider this technological development. With developments in mobile technology, an increasing proportion of learning activities may take place outside the confines of a controlled classroom, and the teacher role may be challenged accordingly. For example, in an environmentalist view of education, education is seen as a type of communication where the teacher facilitates student learning. To facilitate student learning when mobile technology is used for learning purposes, teachers need knowledge of how students maneuver and study within these environments. One crucial concern is understanding how students interact with their surroundings to create learning sites. Such insights may allow teachers to rearrange and redesign educational practices to address their students.