Agents of Change: Virtuality, Gender, and the Challenge to the Traditional University

ISBN-13: 9783810034922 / Angielski / Miękka / 2003 / 224 str.

Gabriele Kreutzner; Heidi Schelhowe

Opis

The university as we have known it is undergoing massive transformations. This observation is commonly made these days during discussions of the future of our academic system(s). While it certainly holds true for the "Western" strong holds of our globe, it likewise applies to a wide variety of marginalized contexts and locations beyond. For historical reasons, universities and academic systems differ considerably from place to place. However, the transformative process under analysis here is driven by major economic and technological develop ments generally subsumed under the label 'globalization'. And although, the contemporary world deliberately puts the stress on change and 'the new', the traditional academic systems are challenged by the great juggernaut of global ized transformation on the level of the particular and the local. In our view, the ongonig changes are neither reason for celebration nor de spair. What motivated us to put this volume together was our curiosity about these processes of change, as well as our awareness of their significance, our partisanship for particular directions that they mayor may not take and, last but not least, our insight into their complexities and heterogeneous, even contradic tory, outcomes."

Spis treści

Mit Beiträgen von: Gabriele Kreutzner/Heidi Schelhowe, Eva Hartmann, Gill Kirkup, Cynthia L. Selfe/Gail E. Hawisher, Rosi Braidotti, Cecile K. M. Crutzen, Gabriele Kreutzner/Heidi Schelhowe/Barbara Schelkle, Seda Gürses, Birgit Oelker/Herbert Asselmeyer, Heidrun Allert/Hadhami Dhraief, Wolfgang Nejdl, Melanie Dunn/Mara-Anahi Kuhl, Maika Büschenfeldt/Birte Plutat/Heidi Schelhowe/Isabel Zorn, Barbara Maria Grüter, Wendy Harcourt, Fatma Alloo, Tanja Paulitz

O autorze

Dr. Gabriele Kreutzner, Interenationale Frauenuniversität Hannover;
Dr. Heidi Schelhowe, Institut für Informatik, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.

Blurb

One of the major driving forces behind the international Women´s University was the interest in changing the traditional university. In its pursuit of this goal, the projekt vifu (the Virtual International University) combined the overall focus on gender with a conceptual stress on virtuality as a potential inroad to transform and innovate the established academic system. This collection presents results and critical evaluations of the vifu as a feminist project designed in flavor of change. In addition to this, the volume presents and discusses projects which theoretically and practically integrate the new ICTs into their departure to new horizons in higher education and research and at the same practice a particular sensitivity towards gender as a social category. The authors of this anthology share the perspective on the category of gender and ICT-related developments summed up by "virtuality" as potential tools for transforming traditional academia. While change is not considered as a quality per se, each contribution makes its case for specific kinds of "making new". In doing so, they also seek answers to the questions of a democratic and socially responsible knowledge production and distribution in the 21 st century.