Abstract:

Digitalization is a process that passed through several stages of digital disruptions (Korhonen & Halen, 2017): Starting with the advent of digital computers in the 1950s and the rise of the internet in the 1990s, digitalization gained momentum in the 2010s with the widespread use of social media, mobile devices, cloud computing, and data analytics, currently supplemented by such techniques as artificial intelligence, robotics, and natural language processing. As a result, all areas of our lives are undergoing massive changes: in the professional sector, production is getting increasingly smarter by relying on autonomous and communicating machinery (Industry 4.0) (Urbach & Röglinger, 2019), in everyday life, traditionally ”dumb” devices such as refrigerators or window blinds are getting increasingly intelligent and interwoven with each other (Internet of Things). Since neither our professional, nor our private lives can be exempted from these changes, it comes as no surprise that education will also undergo massive changes (Harteis, 2018): digitalization offers new tools that can be used in education, but also learners change in terms of learning habits and digital literacy.

Although there are some efforts to better understand what these changes might be in primary or secondary education, it is, at best, only vaguely know how digitalization affects higher education. This is particularly unclear in disciplines that are complex even now, with growing complexity through digitalization. Software engineering is one of these disciplines: since this facet of informatics is concerned with the systematic construction of large and complex software systems, software engineering education will have to pay tribute to new technologies, new application areas, and new types of users in these systems due to digitalization. At the same time, students will change, and so will educational tools.

This paper attempts to make a case for better understanding the effects of digitalization on higher education, and highlights areas that need to be examined thoroughly in order to arrive at such a better understanding, thus establishing the basis for a research agenda which aims to answer questions such as:
• What exactly are so-called future skills? How can they be identified? What is their precise meaning?
• If future skills are intended learning outcomes in higher education, how can they be addressed and evaluated?
• Can digitalization support the assessment of future skills? How far can digitalized assessment methods reach beyond plain knowledge?
• “We are facing a world where the cost per bit of information is getting cheaper, while the cost of a useful bit may be exceedingly costly.” (Prensky, 2001, p. 3). But then, how can knowledge in a digitalized world be restricted to the essential bits?
• What are suitable elements for micro-learning to accommodate Generation Y/Z? How and according to which strategy can tiny learning chunks, such as in micro-learning, be arranged to form a coherent overall picture?
• How can learning analytics aid successfully in adapting learning settings to individual learning habits and needs of Generation Y/Z students, under due consideration of privacy and security issues? Which learning data are useful to draw conclusions on reasonable adaptations, e.g. by pinpointing individual learning obstacles?

Keywords:

Higher education, digitalization, future skills.