Agency in the Digital Educational Environment: Opportunities and Risks
Abstract
The article examines the impact of the digital educational environment on the agency of all subjects of the educational process, the resulting transformational changes in agency, potential vectors of its development, and the risks caused by the application of digital educational technologies. The influence of different types of agency on the formation of a sustainable learning environment in the context of digitalisation is determined: student agency is conductive to the adaptation of students to local and global transformations; teacher agency ensures the flexibility of the educational process; co-agency contributes to the strengthening of subject interaction and effective collaboration between all stakeholders of the educational environment. The article highlights that the latest technologies have both a positive and negative impact on the development of all types of agency: learning management systems (LMS) and interactive online platforms help to expand access to educational resources, personalise the learning process and increase its flexibility. Despite their significant benefits, digital technologies in education also pose a number of challenges. The key risks include the digital divide, whereby some students may be left out of the mainstream educational process due to low levels of technological accessibility or lack of digital skills, and the negative impact on academic integrity, which is the proliferation of opportunities for academic misconduct, including plagiarism and misuse of educational resources. The authors emphasise the need to maintain an optimal balance between the integration of digital technologies and the use of traditional pedagogical approaches, which will help to improve the efficiency of the educational process, preserve academic integrity and form a sustainable agency in the educational process subjects.
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