Towards Post-Digital Open, Distance Learning: Utopia or Dystopia

The effect of the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic on the education sector forces us to consider the impossibility of education without technology. Meanwhile, technology (in one form or another) has always been an integral part of education and increasingly assumed to be as available as the air that we breathe and the water that we drink. On the other hand, in higher education in general, there is increasing evidence that the post-digital serves as a useful point of departure in research on the role, impact, advantages and disadvantages of technology in education. Following a search on Scopus and the Web of Science, it is therefore evident that the Global North is responsible for all of the research on the post-digital and education, with England and Croatia being the main contributors. In this study, we therefore critically engage with the notion of the post-digital and the future of distance education in the specific context of the Global South. In the study, we explore and attempt to present the role technology played and continues to play in the evolution of distance education. We then map the contours of the post-digital before considering a research agenda for post-digital distance education in the context of the Global South.