A concept in the education sciences
Digital Pedagogy
When a lesson built on digital technologies cannot be carried back to paper and chalk without losing its essence, a new field of pedagogy begins.
After Istrate, O. (2022), Journal of Digital Pedagogy, 1(1), 3–10
A definition
Digital pedagogy is the part of pedagogy that studies the design, implementation and evaluation of educational situations comprising a significant component of digital technologies, as well as the necessary conditions for their implementation.
It looks upon themes such as
- synchronous and asynchronous interactions in virtual and mixed learning environments
- learning management platforms and tools
- digital educational resources
- educational usage of various digital applications and tools
- virtual assistants for learning and teaching
- digital competences of teachers
- educational policies and specific programs
Any definition has to begin from a solid grasp of pedagogy, because digital pedagogy is, and will remain, a projection of pedagogy in the digital space. (Istrate, 2022)
The demarcation criterion
Take a learning experience born digital. Now try to carry it back to the analogue classroom, and watch what survives.
Fully digital: all six capabilities intact.
When a teaching, learning or assessment experience built on digital technologies cannot be transposed back into an “analogue” setting without losing its essence (its learning objectives or its teaching strategy), then we are dealing with innovation that belongs to digital pedagogy alone.
Seen from three perspectives
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Digital pedagogy is an open pedagogy.
Today, the idea of an open pedagogy has little substance without digital technologies.
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Digital pedagogy is an innovative pedagogy.
Far from being on the periphery, digital pedagogy is today the cutting edge of pedagogical innovation.
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Digital pedagogy is pedagogy.
The digital environment has opened new spaces and horizons for education, and education is pedagogy’s object of study.
Digital pedagogy brings more pedagogy into practice.
Where the field begins
A situation belongs to digital pedagogy when it meets at least one of these conditions:
- the direct use of digital technologies for educational purposes: in teaching, learning, assessment or educational management;
- creating the conditions for using digital technologies in education, whether buying equipment, adapting the curriculum or running training programmes that build digital skills; or
- weighing their potential in an educational context: when shaping an educational policy or an instructional design, or when deciding whether to use a given digital tool or resource.
One field, many names
The literature has walked the same conceptual area under a family of overlapping terms:
- e-learning
- online learning
- web-based learning
- cyberpedagogy
- multimedia pedagogy
- OER-enabled pedagogy
- electronically-enabled pedagogy
- hybrid pedagogy
- distance education
- computer-mediated education
- technology-mediated pedagogy
- virtual learning environments
- digital curriculum
Whatever we call it (digital, multimedia, remote, innovative, interactive), it is still pedagogy: lively, open to the new, transformative and, above all, useful.
The article of record
Istrate, O. (2022). Digital Pedagogy. Definition and Conceptual Area. Journal of Digital Pedagogy, 1(1), 3–10. Bucharest: Institute for Education. https://doi.org/10.61071/JDP.0313 (opens in new tab)
Publish in the Journal of Digital Pedagogy
If your work advances the theory or practice of digital pedagogy, whether conceptual studies, research reports, or critical reflections on teaching, learning and assessment with digital technologies, the Journal of Digital Pedagogy would like to read it. It is an open-access journal published by the Institute for Education in Bucharest and distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution licence, so your article reaches readers without barriers.
No fees at any stage: submission, peer review and publication are free of charge.