The University and the Algorithmic Gaze

Taking an innovative and critical look at the ways in which digital data and algorithms are changing the face of higher education in multiple ways, this open access book examines their impact at both the macro scale of universities and systems worldwide, but also at the more subtle level of effects on academics and students.

In doing so, it focuses on the day-to-day life of the university, examining how the digital is changing the way that we communicate, learn, and create new knowledge.

As well as exploring the role of ‘big data’ and learning analytics, drawing on a cutting-edge set of critical approaches, the book also focuses on areas of academic life not normally considered to be part of datafication. The physical structures of surveillance on campus, for example, and the ways in which systems of ‘quality’ in research and teaching can morph into regimes of surveillance and algorithmic discipline, with far-reaching effects on marginalised groups, academic subjectivities, textual practices, and what counts as legitimate knowledge. Taking an interdisciplinary and international perspective, the volume interweaves insights from contemporary Applied Linguistics with posthuman perspectives on semiotics and textual practices, New Materialism, Science and Technology Studies, Information Science, and Human Geography. Its wide-ranging analysis generates fresh, critical new insights into the nature of communication, semiosis, textual practices, subjectivities and knowledge practices at this dynamic and fast-moving juncture in the history and development of higher education worldwide, providing a much-needed critical commentary, and set of provocative agendas for anyone interested in the university in the ‘algorithmic age’.

The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by University College London, UK.