Chapter 7 ABSTRACT Emerging technologies such as machine learning, the cloud, the internet of things (IoT), social web, mobility, robotics, and blockchain, among others, are powering a technological revolution in such a way that are transforming all human activities. These new technologies have generated creative ways of offering goods and services. Today’s consumers demand in addition to quality, innovation, a realtime and ubiquitous service. In this context, what is the challenge that academy faces? What is the effect of these new technologies on the universities mission? What are people’s expectations about academy in this new era? This chapter tries to get answers to these questions and explain how these emerging technologies are converting universities to lead society transformation to the digital age. Under this new paradigm, there are only two roads: innovate or perish. As might be expected universities are embracing these technologies for innovating themselves.
97 Chapter Emerging Technologies and Universities: The 4IR and the Future of Higher Education Fausto E Jacome https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6808-7294 Escuela Superior Politecnica del Litoral, Ecuador ABSTRACT Emerging technologies such as machine learning, the cloud, the internet of things (IoT), social web, mobility, robotics, and blockchain, among others, are powering a technological revolution in such a way that are transforming all human activities These new technologies have generated creative ways of offering goods and services Today’s consumers demand in addition to quality, innovation, a real-time and ubiquitous service In this context, what is the challenge that academy faces? What is the effect of these new technologies on the universities mission? What are people’s expectations about academy in this new era? This chapter tries to get answers to these questions and explain how these emerging technologies are converting universities to lead society transformation to the digital age Under this new paradigm, there are only two roads: innovate or perish As might be expected universities are embracing these technologies for innovating themselves INTRODUCTION Boosted by the technologies of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR), society is being transformed and reshaped This new age characterized by digital platforms, connectivity, unlimited processing power, unlimited storage capacity, and mobility is changing the behavior of all societies and cultures Under this scenery, the academy cannot remain passive and silent, the academy must adopt these technologies and be prepared to produce the social transformation due the knowledge automation To get into the digital age, universities must redefine themselves to become the next Digital University DOI: 10.4018/978-1-7998-4930-8.ch007 Copyright © 2021, IGI Global Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited Emerging Technologies and Universities This chapter addresses the effect that universities are experiencing because of emerging technologies resulting from the 4IR Universities are changing their mission, their environment, their organizational structure to support their reputation and market presence The chapter begins commenting about the advent of the fourth industrial revolution in the historical context Next, discuss some of the technologies that are transforming societies, especially those technologies that are modifying the university’s environment and the higher education system This will conduct us to conceive a clear idea of what represents the challenges that educational institutions are facing today and what transformations are taking place Thereafter, it looks into the thinking of some authors about the university in the digital era, especially the changes that are modifying the teaching-learning and research processes In the same way, it looks at the resources required to support the new university and how the academy will be able to take advantage of these technologies to innovate themselves to offer better services THE 4IR AND THE FUTURE OF HIGHER EDUCATION The first industrial revolution occurred when man used steam to power machines Electricity and power machines gave way to mass production of goods which was known as the second industrial revolution Then, the development of supercomputers according to Moore’s law, the invention of the internet, process automation between others gave way to the third industrial revolution Today, technologies derived from supercomputers, the internet and artificial intelligence, robotics to name a few, are enabling humanity to automate knowledge But, what does automation of knowledge mean? To get a good idea of it, thinking about that certain complex human skills could be executed by machines or computers For example, driving a car is a human ability that has been developed in many hours of training and practice Now, think about to transfer this skill to an object that executes it without human intervention In this case, a smart object has been created where the knowledge to something is replicated automatically Nowadays, Google’s Waymo project is almost a reality, in this project, a human ability has been transferred to a self-driving vehicle The human know-how ‘to drive’ is being replaced by hardware with artificial intelligence With the 4IR technologies, Knowledge automation is now possible, and just like these projects, there are many other emerging solutions in different areas that are changing our world The 4IR begins with this declaration: we are at the beginning of a revolution that is fundamentally changing the way we live, work, and relate to one another In its scale, scope and complexity, what I consider to be the fourth industrial revolution is unlike anything humankind has experienced before (Schwab, 2016) This digital revolution is also known as the digital age is reshaping all institutions and government systems like education, health care, transport, and communication among others This phenomenon is global, has no limits, it is occurring exponentially, and its impact will be profound mainly on the behavior of human production and consumption Indeed, 4IR is causing several impacts in many areas Their effects will be in the major or minor grades depending on industry and geography It is a global consensus and concern that emerging technologies sustain a significant impact on jobs The history tells us that the implantation of new technologies always had provoked employment lost or jobs shift But new technologies also generate new jobs that require new expertise, sometimes expertise not seen before Then, what people have to to get unfired? The answer is only one: acquire this new expertise or develop these new skills Regardless of whether you are prepared or not, it is a condition of living and everybody has to assume their role 98 Emerging Technologies and Universities Here underlies the opportunity for universities in this digital age Traditionally, humanity has rejected the change, and the universities are nor the exception, many universities have resisted the digital age but their impulse and acceptance are so broad that they have no choice and have to begin to assimilate it As (Raschke, 2003) argues: To date educators in general, and higher education in particular, have largely resisted the digital onslaught, or savvily co-opted it in a fashion that so far has absorbed its transformative energy Teachers have replaced paper syllabi with web pages or encouraged the use of email for out-of-class communication with the instructor Increasingly they are employing presentation programs such as Microsoft PowerPoint with their lectures But they have not allowed the changes in courses and classes, which the world wide web will inevitably accomplish They have ferociously resisted the process that has taken hold by now in all other sectors of the digital society, whereby centralized management and ‘top-down’ authority is replaced by non-sequential and coactive networks that rely far more on the efficiency of communication than command and control If universities not embrace these new technologies and adapt to them, they will pass away and will convert as Peter Drucker said in 1997 in an interview by Forbes, thirty years from now the big university campuses will be relics Universities won’t survive It’s as large a change as when we first got the printed book But this condition of living is not the only problem of the higher education system, global education is still a big issue that the world has to solve According to (UNESCO Institute for Statistics, 2019) in Europe and North America, approximately 41% of youth and adults in 2016 were formal and non-formal education and training in the previous year, and by 2017 approximately 45% of youth/adults have some information and communications technology (ICT) skills These figures reflect that education still is not universal, that there is still a shortfall in people’s preparedness and training in new technologies and in the development of new skills, and these figures indicate what is happening in developed countries, what to say about developing countries where the process of obtaining data and information is still difficult and complex Another problem that faces the higher education system is a global concern about the funding needed for accomplishing the Incheon declaration, ensure equal access for all women and men to affordable and quality technical, vocational and tertiary education, including university (UNESCO EDUCATION 2030, 2015) The funding needed by universities is increasing year by year while the crisis in the sector is also increasing Across the world, in most developing countries, voices are raising against governments for reduced funding and state support Claiming because people have increased difficulties to access university education, they are calling for public accountability and efficient use of resources Many countries are going to have difficulties to liberate resources and budget to obtain the goals proposed by UNESCO in Education-2030 According to (Johnson, 1997) management guru Peter Drucker said about, Do you realize that the cost of higher education has risen as fast as the cost of health care? And for the middleclass family, college education for their children is as much of a necessity as is medical care—without it the kids have no future Such totally uncontrollable expenditures, without any visible improvement in either the content or the quality of education, means that the system is rapidly becoming untenable Higher education is in deep crisis Under these conditions, universities have to be more creative and competitive This means they have to convert scientific knowledge into products and services that can be monetized as fast as possible This is the quality in the digital age, to be immediate On the other side, as the Information and communications technologies (ICT’s) disseminate across the planet, is a matter of time for a complete global absorption or adoption This concept of Internet Universality endorsed by (UNESCO, 2015), and the goals in world education 2030 are pressing on uni99 Emerging Technologies and Universities versities and all higher education systems The higher education system has to satisfy the globe needs with a complete gamma of novel professionals with enough technical knowledge and edged tech-skills The academia must decide wisely how to maximize their income to deliver undergraduate or graduate education, research & development (R&D) and innovation DIGITAL PRESENCE All these new technologies, that emerged from 4IR, also has changed the way people present themselves to society and the world Since was possible to have a cellular phone, email and a personalized web page many people and organizations have realized that they can use fashion, words, and facts to show themselves to the world To possess presence in the internet world never has been an urgent necessity like now People cannot live without a cell phone; The mobile phone has become part of their bodies With cell phones and the applications offered through it, people have created a digital life as an append of their physical life People’s digital life has become so significant that people spend hours and hours of their time polishing their digital portfolios They want to show to the world who they represent; where they have been; what they are working on; how they spend their time and what are their preferences? People’s digital presence is constructed based on their digital interactions Therefore, the social internet or social machines like Facebook and Twitter have taken advantage of this need and have provided a digital platform for people interaction These tools have become so effective to gather people’s data That the information collected is so worthy that it has been the target of many hackers Recall the case of Cambridge Analytics The information stored in these social machines has been successfully monetized through publicity But the traditional marketing process has changed, modern digital marketing has emerged, and it is taking all fields Through tools named “Analytics” it is possible to analyze consumer behavior and preferences and deploy personalized marketing campaigns These technologies have been so effective that it has generated a multimillion merchandise business through internet not ever seen before whose representatives are Amazon.com and Alibaba.com Additionally, digital marketing has extended to manage de brands and this has originated a new more sophisticated field call Digital Branding, as (Rowles, 2014) mention, digital branding is really about is the sum of our online experiences These online experiences may be influenced and impacted by logos and sponsorship, but we need to understand branding to be something much more than visual identity And what about universities Does the digital presence apply to them? The answer is, of course, It does Does digital branding apply to universities? And the answer once more is, of course, it does, they are not out the game Many of them have turned to these social machines and they populated pages and pages of information showing the internet world between other things: who are they, which they offer and what they are achieving in the searching field? But, in the case of universities, the way to demonstrate what they are doing goes beyond to show things As we know, universities also are a business, therefore this has turned into a competition, in recent years many universities have become online to promote their name recognition and improve customer service, universities have embraced what is called e-branding or digital branding For universities e-branding has become a specialized field, authors like (Del Pino, 2018), (Takaki, Bravo, & Martinez, 2015) have proposed a digital branding model just for universities Furthermore, the digital presence of universities is the principal input for the pervasive rhetoric and obsessive notion of a world-class university (WCU) implemented through the global rankings of univer100 Emerging Technologies and Universities sities This ranking built on a model for commercial rankings of colleges and universities in the United States has been adopted for governments who believe that research-intensive universities represent a path for national economic development But this ranking does not say all about one entity, is merely a focus on a narrow band of internationally recognized indicators of research productivity This ranking reinforces an already present anxiety: that many economically developed economies, and those striving for such status, lack the best universities It is hard to believe that nations like Germany and France survive the twenty first century without some critical mass of WCUs (International and Development Education Series, 2016) THE DIGITAL UNIVERSITY As we can imagine, this digital era has altered the order of everything, and these changes in fields like social, economic, political, and cultural have leaded Universities to decide between two options, to perish or to evolve To evolve means to embrace the new technologies and reborn as a new entity based on the exercise of democracy and freedom and digitalized practices and systems This new entity is called, “Digital University” Many authors have written about ‘Digital University’, trying to conceptualize their purpose, structure, and scope (Peters & Jandric, 2018) say, the digital university is not a place, technology, or way of thinking The digital university is simply what teachers and students in the digital age While for (Johnston, MacNeill, & Smyth, 2018) a Digital University might therefore simply be a center of the convergence of the Internet, WWW, computers and mobile devices to produce and share information for a diverse range of economic, social, political and educational purposes Even though, some extremist experts have predicted that in the future the teaching process will take place online, with little face-to-face instruction or interaction, this, has led some academics to envisage the utopian possibilities for ‘open education’, offering this level of education to anyone with an internet connection and digital device The introduction of massive open online courses (MOOCs) is one element of this move, but so too are such initiatives as open access publishing of scholarly materials such as research papers, books, and syllabi Platforms specifically for academics to connect with each other and share their research publications have developed, the most well-known of which are currently Academia edu and Research Gate (Lupton, Mewburn, & Thomson, 2018) The university in the digital era will not be a place or a building as we conceive contemporaneous universities, in their place universities will be virtual learning environments (VLE) where students participate digitally and the information over the internet will provide all the literacy needed to accomplish a course or a curriculum The truth is, since the introduction of mobile computing, Wi-Fi and cloud computing, the university sector is now thoroughly saturated with opportunities for academics to communicate instantaneously with each other, with students and people outside the university across geographical regions Academics can choose from a plethora of digital tools to conduct teaching and research Ibid REINVENTING THE UNIVERSITY As expected, universities have begun undergoing structural and conceptual changes, especially in the work of their academics Teaching as we know it has changed, the way of learning, discovering, and researching has also changed because of this technology All these changes in the higher education system 101 Emerging Technologies and Universities are still not completely visible, they have barely begun and will continue to affect universities as they mature Underneath are some of the most visible changes that are transforming academic institutions STEAM Instruction In the 4IR context, everyone is now responsible for lifelong learning and upskilling It is the skills that will carry you through; the content will always be changing (Gleasson, 2018) Here is the opportunity for academia to reshape society’s skills and knowledge The big question now is, which are these new skills that the 4IR’s technologies are demanding? According with (WEF, World Economic Forum, 2016) “Future of Jobs” report, the top ten skills that will be needed in order of priority by employers by 2020 are complex problem solving, critical thinking, creativity, people management, coordinating with others, emotional intelligence, judgment and decision making, service orientation, negotiation, and cognitive flexibility Many of the skills listed are not based in a STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) instruction, many of them are part of it is called today, “soft skills”, this can include but are not limited to social graces, communication abilities, language skills, personal habits, cognitive or emotional empathy, time management, teamwork and leadership traits According to (Lewis, 2018) most of these soft skills are developed by studying liberal arts As believed by ancients the liberal arts education is appropriate to create a free citizen Lewis states tree reasons to pursue a liberal education: first, Citizenship Second, to shape more innovative contributors to the economy and society, and third prepare students well for life in a multicultural or cosmopolitan society In other words, the higher education system must, foster the habits of mind and character needed for leadership in all sectors of society (Yale-NUS College, 2016) Many universities have modified their academic curriculums to develop these soft skills in the new generation of professionals, some credits are granted for courses with a profile in social and humanistic sciences, it could say that they are humanizing the engineering, as it was in the renaissance, the university taught sciences and liberal arts all together, “Trivium et Quadrivium” Therefore, the STEM instruction is migrating to STEAM instruction, where de A stands for Arts, this means that the core disciplines for the new careers are based in Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Math Teaching and Research The widest impact of 4IR technologies has been on the research process and knowledge generation With the advent of the Internet, networks of data, information, and research such as Google Scholar, Research Gate, and other networks have emerged These networks have directly facilitated access and knowledge generation The speed to generate current knowledge it has been exponentially increasing Thanks to these technologies, it has never been easier to interconnect each other and share information This almost immediate interconnectivity offered by digital networks along with workflow automation has generated completely new research information management systems (e.g., Elsevier Pure or Symplectic Elements) On the other side, printed sources are increasingly being deprecated, instead, e-books are taking their place In this context, a question emerged How can libraries survive if they continue with their initial mission? The answer is, they cannot Therefore, libraries have to innovate their mission and reconfigure the information space and the process according to the current network/digital environment (Dempsey & Malpas., 2018) Libraries’ new mission should be a partner in research and learning, student success 102 Emerging Technologies and Universities support and community engagement, driven by new technologies like Workflow, digital scholarship, and shared systems configured around user experiences and university’s needs One of the primary objectives of the universities, in the digital age, is to accelerate the process to generate scientific knowledge The time is crucial to be competitive and the process has become larger Today, it is not enough doing research and development, but it is imperative to accomplish the innovative process and go beyond publishing and commercializing Besides that, the knowledge production process is suffering a big transformation (Jahanian, 2013) presented a paper entitled ‘The Promise of Big Data’ at the Big Data Partners Workshop on May 2013, as part of The White House Initiative of Big Data, 2012, in the heading of his presentation mention, Advances in information technologies are transforming the fabric of our society, and data represents a transformative new currency for science, engineering, education and commerce, later Jahanian suggests that a paradigm shift has occurred from Hypothesis-driven to Data-driven Discovery This means that the traditional scientific method to produce knowledge has changed The traditional method based on to test some hypotheses and create a model or theory that predicts the consequences of those hypotheses no longer sustains in the digital era With at least five hundred billons gigabytes of digital content on the internet coming from computers, tablets, phones, cameras, sensors and so on, some authors suggest that with such a quantity of data is enough to determine correlations instead of formulating hypotheses Many scientific disciplines are becoming more computer-based and data-driven In 2008, Chris Anderson wrote an article something extreme, End of Theory: the data deluge makes the scientific method obsolete (Anderson, 2008) He argues that in some fields like physic and genetics testable models have become inadequacy, the solution lies in finding meaningful correlations in massive piles of Big Data But not all are agreed with this proposal, in the report of (Bollier, 2010) we can explore the thoughtful of some representative authors in the area, one of them, Patrick W Gross, Chairman of the Lovell Group said, In practice, the theory and the data reinforce each other, It is not a question of data correlations versus theory The use of data for correlations allows one to test theories and refine them Even Bollier’s reflection is, but no computer system is likely to simulate the level of subtlety and personalization than human beings show in dynamic social context, at least in the near future Running the numbers and finding correlations will never be enough There are other sophisticated technologies like the cluster computing and Cloud computing that are fueling the paradigm of Big Data The principal use of Big Data is the inferential data analysis to identifying customer correlations It was initially used by internet-based companies that used search engines and social networking websites for this purpose Presently, Big Data is used with the same intention in broader fields by applications like Netflix, Google earth, TripAdvisor and so on For Carl (Raschke, 2003), the relationship between ‘teaching’ and ‘research’ in the digital era becomes increasingly blurry He argues that both words designated different and unequal labor Either teacher, researchers, and students all pursue the acquisition of new understanding through questioning and inquiry Therefore, he suggests that a better phrase will be ‘collaborative inquiry’ because this connotes teamwork in the knowledge enterprise Digital Learning The biggest impact of the 4IR technologies is in the way we learn The learning process could be a different experience for students, teachers, and researchers With the inferential analysis of Bid Data, comes another technology applied to education and is called Learning analytics Analytics’ is a term 103 Emerging Technologies and Universities used in business and science to refer to computational support for capturing digital data to help inform decision-making (UNESCO, 2012) For the education community, learning analytics is helping to analyze learning data about students and their contexts, and it allows teachers to improve learning systems through evidence-based adaptation Learning analytics covers a wide range of analytics from regional, state, national, to institutional, and It supports the tracking and interpretation of process-level data for individual learners The first kinds of analytics that some institutions are applying are the analytics dashboards, this technology is now appearing in most online learning platforms This is essentially the impact of Business Intelligence products on learning platforms Until recently, data logs were not suitable for a non-technical user could use it and interpret it, but these has changed Today, data is rendered via a range of graphs, tables, and other visualizations to generate custom reports designed to consumption by learners, educators, administrators, and system analysts More advanced analytics integrates data from university sub-systems (e.g Helpdesk calls; Student Information Systems) and powerful tools (but harder to learn) enabling users to go beyond predefined reports and explore relationships between different variables Learners may get basic analytics such as how they are doing relative to the cohort average (e.g test scores, forum contributions, webinar participation) Ibid A more advanced application of Analytics is Predictive Analytics With predictive analytics, trough static and dynamic learner’s data, teachers can predict the trajectory that they are on and hence make more timely interventions Another application of analytics is the Adaptive Learning platforms, this application builds a model of a learner’s understanding of a specific topic and enables fine-grained feedback and adaptive presentation of content While Discourse Analytics goes beyond simple quantitative logs and provides feedback to educators and learners on the quality of the contributions (UNESCO, 2012) A very useful compendium of higher education case studies is being compiled by EDUCAUSE In the same way, Big Data and Analytics are transforming other scientific fields, introducing datadriven exploratory methodologies, and redefining the researcher’s workbench and skillset A consequence of this digital culture is the vanishing of the traditional classroom The learning process centered on the teacher and many students it is no longer practical neither effective A complete shift from receptive to active learning process has begun The traditional learning process is a controlled one that warrants and preserves a type of educational experience for all This contrasts with the webbased learning method that offers a partially controlled and guided process, the guidance itself comes from the contour of the system, and how the pedagogical architect configures it (Raschke, 2003) If the learning process has changed, consequently some questions arise in our mind What kind of instruction must universities offer? What kind of learning-space is required to develop this new learning-teaching process? What are the teaching strategies for this new process? Professionally, teachers must rethink their mission and they must deliver as much information as is assimilated by students They must learn to work in a decentralized and dispersed environment The one-way old fashion teaching process has changed to the multi-way, multi-media, multi-platform And this is valid because the learners have adopted digital media technologies and the ubiquity of digital communications to accumulate knowledge So, teachers’ work is changing They need to master analytics to improve their courses Teachers have to prepare content and to deliver it as soon as possible through an academic/social network, also 104 Emerging Technologies and Universities be ready any time that the students need assistance or expert intervention Teachers must be conscious that there is a modern generation of learners whose skills and expectations derive from growing up on the net, and they use the internet as a virtual library and a classroom The learner now decides when and where to log on, how to work through the course materials, what resources to draw upon, who to work with collaboratively, when to contribute to discussions, and so on (Mason & Rennie, 2006) It seems that the 4IR has created a new learner space, this space that some theorists called ‘distributed education’ or ‘distributed learning’ Distributed Education is a broad term which includes aspects of distance and online education, as well as blending with face-to-face learning Ibid Indeed, the fact is that the way we learn and how the new generations learn has changed There are new learning spaces full of internet technologies, artifacts, and tools that are trying to make thinking visible According to (Johnston, MacNeill, & Smyth, 2018), the use of digital tools and spaces for learning generates visible communications (written and visual) that are often either semi-permanent or remain visible over time For example, technologies like Audience Response System (ARS), commonly known as ‘clicker’, are making visible the split of opinion gauged through classroom voting or in sustaining shared reflective dialogue and debate through online discussion These digitally enriched learning spaces present increased opportunities to connect learners with others in their appropriate fields and share what they have learned from their engagement in other virtual communities and spaces that are beyond the university These learning spaces utilize the format of ‘flipped room’ in which the student performs the primary and active role, Students are encouraged to be the actor of their own learning process and bringing all that they have found out back into the formal learning spaces (Johnston, MacNeill, & Smyth, 2018) Virtuality and virtual reality (VR) technologies can also characterize ‘bringing the outside’ into digitally enriched learning spaces VR and augmented reality (AR) technologies together can enable an immersive, interactive experience that closely replicates the genuine one Even more, it is not necessarily the isolated individual experience it once was, through the emergence of virtual reality domes which allow collaborative VR learning experiences Also, the use of mobile technologies can play an important role in allowing learners to capture and document what they have found in the field, or to evidence the learning they have undertaken in the field or a professional environment Ibid There are many case studies of the use of AR in learning and teaching processes such as the SCARLET Project in Manchester (Association for Learning, 2012) A group of researchers at ESPOL, a public polytechnic university in Ecuador, # 64 in the QS-LATAM ranking 2019, are using video games and artificial intelligence technologies to develop a pedagogical tool for school students The objective of the project called MIDI-AM is to discover better forms of education for children from to years old that incorporate technologies in the teaching process The MIDI-AM project was nominated for the UNESCO-King Hamad Bin Isa Al-Khalifa 2019 Award, this award recognizes the use of ICT in education and rewards innovative approaches that employ current technologies with a view to expanding educational opportunities and learning for all throughout life, in accordance with objective of the 2030 EDUCATION Agenda This year almost 800 projects are participating in this prize whose theme of the 2019 edition ‘The use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to innovate in the field of education, teaching and learning´ According to (Barnes, 2014) a specialist in e-learning tools, there is a difference between training and education Education is all about learning the theory while training provides you the skills to something rather than just know-how about something It is possible these differences have generated 105 Emerging Technologies and Universities specialized tools for each of them Therefore, many universities have adopted two technologies to deliver training and education On the one side, Universities and commercial education companies are employing what is called ‘Learning Management Systems’ (LMS) LMS is a software application for the administration and delivery of academic courses, training programs, or learning and development programs It was designed to identify training and learning gaps, utilizing analytical data and reporting LMS is primarily used in specific training courses where students have to demonstrate that acquired or developed the objective skill On the other side, some universities are using Virtual Learning Environments (VLE), a web-based platform to deliver digital courses They present resources, activities, and interactions within a course structure and provide various stages of assessment VLE design is intended to be used as a place to collaborate and extend discussions and contributions These systems are equally suited for the needs of independent educational programs, charter schools, and home-based education VLE is typically used in distance learning programs to deliver various courses to a considerable number of students at a more reduced cost In this kind of instruction, students are required to demonstrate their knowledge and skills to be assessed, and they frequently participate in group thinking and discussion But some people believe this technology can leave the learner with a passive, un-engaging experience Internationality of University Driven by the globalization phenomenon and the current technologies of the internet, a global knowledge space is emerging, and this is being defined according to cultures and economies In the first world, traditional universities have regulated the delivery of courses in a digital format related to their curricula While in the third world, the internet is speeding a planetary revolution in learning Therefore, the new knowledge space of the post-modern university is a latticework of learner-motivated inquires and strategies that follow along with the expertise of the knowledge professional- what heretofore we have known as the ‘teacher ‘or ‘professor’ The lattice is interwoven with the territory of the culture It is a permeable space It is a liberated space It is knowledge that has outstripped its fetal form as ‘formal’ teaching and learning (Raschke, 2003) This global space allows knowledge to be transmitted online, asynchronously and in on-demand format, instead of the traditional blocks of knowledge transmitted on a time-frame basis, and synchronously Nowadays, if any type of information is required, just ask the internet, and will get some responses, sometimes we get a huge quantity of responses, the big dilemma is determining which of them are true or false This situation has raised an issue about reliability We can trust in a book that we recognize that has been written by and authority or expert in the field, but a document found over the internet, who guarantees the reliability of that knowledge? Fortunately, for us, new technologies are finding solutions for these issues too This new knowledge space is converting universities in open universities or virtual universities based on that some theorists call ‘Distributed learning.’ Within this alternative paradigm of the open university, two subjects have emerged in the context of universities: The International Student Mobility (ISM) and the Transnational Higher Education (TNHE) International Student Mobility in higher education has been growing consistently since the year 2000 According to (OECD, 2019) the total number of internationally mobile students in tertiary programs increased from million in 1998 to 5.3 million in 2017 This is mainly because, in many countries, higher-order skills and competencies have both economic and social effects Tertiary-educated adults 106 Emerging Technologies and Universities are more insulated against the risk of long-term unemployment and as of the year 2018, their employment rate was 9% higher than adults with only secondary education In the same way, young tertiaryeducated adults (25–34-year-olds) earn 38% more than their peers with secondary qualifications This gap widens with age, with 45–54-year-olds with tertiary qualifications earning 70% more than their secondary-educated peers ISM is a socio-cultural phenomenon treated depending on regions or countries Last year, in many Latin-American countries, student voices were raised against governments asking for better access and opportunities to receive a tertiary education Therefore, students have seen ISM as a second opportunity when they have no chance to access or afford a local university program For others, this is the first step to immigrate to a place with better chances of life (Peidong & Yi’En, 2018) The second phenomenon is the internationalization of Higher Education Institutions, unlike the ISM where the university receives worldwide students on their campus, in the TNHE the university goes international, either offering programs to undergraduates and postgraduates abroad via online, distance education or virtual education Some universities have used the franchise method; others have expanded their campuses in other countries alone or with cooperation of local institutions Many authors agreed that an educational institution can become an open university or virtual university if, first, democratize learning through the flexibility of institutional and curricular structures, as well as the widening of participation, this is only possible with ICTs being applied into the institution Second, the university has a robust digital presence, and it has invested in build a strong reputation through the university’s rankings, brand development, and brand management Third, universities have established goals and programs related to various forms of international engagement, from student enrollment and support to curriculum and research activity Reliability A big issue with the information over the internet is reliability Just open your browser and ask for a concept, and you receive hundreds or thousands of responses How you can discriminate these responses, which of them is valid information and which are not There are many fake news and data over the internet, and each time it is very difficult to know who is telling the truth The social web or social machines like Facebook or Twitter are tools that allow people to post news Sometimes, depending on the purpose of the people, the news is fake Into the community that receives this news, some persons will share same feelings and way of thinking, and those people possibly will retransmit the news without matter if the information has been verified or corroborated, in other words, without regarding whether the news is true or false If many people retransmit this news, it will create a trend, and this trend can be interpreted as true even though the news is false The same thing occurs with the information on the internet Some creators of value and knowledge feel that are not being rewarded and recognized properly For many researchers, there is increasingly a blurring of identity, content, workflow, and network identity as they disclose and share publications How can they prevent that this happens? The answer is not straightforward, but there is a new technology called blockchain that could transform this scenario Blockchain represents a kind of ‘internet of values’ instead of the ‘internet of information’, the main characteristics of this technology is to be fast, distributed across a global ledger, running in millions of computers and it is available to everybody This new technology promises to make big transformations that will help in the construction of a prosperous and better world: Protecting rights through immutable 107 Emerging Technologies and Universities records, creating a true sharing economy, Ending the remittance rip-off, Recapturing our identities and Ensuring compensation for creators of value (Tapscott, 2016) Blockchain technologies can be used as other tools like ‘wikis’ to support collaborative authoring They can register the history of revisions that a piece of information has gone through and this way could ensure knowledge’s intellectual property Blockchain technologies could ensure that all shared information will be reliable because has been validated and corroborated by peers This will entitle authors and institutions to be recognized and awarded for their contributions Furthermore, with these technologies, it is possible the ending the information access pay-off, making a truly democratized information world In this context, (Johnston, MacNeill, & Smyth, 2018) wrote, the extent to which various digital tools make collaborative thinking visible is much more valuable in ensuring fairness in participation than accounting for how and where an individual is represented in the finished piece of work Virtual Libraries Libraries have traditionally been associated with a large amount of printed material The centuries-old image of libraries has been of large public buildings that have dedicated to preserving academic and cultural knowledge This knowledge will subsequently be used by new generations of students and researchers, and for the dissemination to the population through the public education system Even now, the size and quality of libraries weigh on universities’ reputation In academia, universities of excellence are supported by an extensive library with a considerable number of collections and a budget enough to invest in recent acquisitions and technologies Under this configuration, libraries can provide educational and research materials that promote the offer of a modern undergraduate and postgraduate careers But the academic and cultural record is not an exclusive jurisdiction of universities or the higher education system Publishers have come into play because universities have subordinated themselves to a reputation system allocated by publications: Therefore, editorials which have increasingly become commercial, have developed models that control the access to knowledge and research outcomes These models, that control the access to knowledge, have rising ethical discussions in the scientific community But this commercial landscape in the future will have no place, because, access to information as we conceived is becoming a service, an open access licensed service Current technologies are modifying the behavior of students and researchers Both have novel forms to learn and discover, this is leaving traditional library services obsolete The present generation of learners is using the internet as a virtual library For this cause, libraries need to offer innovative services based on creation, curation, disclosure, and preservation of knowledge Libraries need to use of institutionally produced materials, and proportionate research, teaching and learning workflow support (DEMPSEY&MALPAS., 2018) A workflow is a set of activities, people and ICT resources programmed to obtain a specific goal It is an effective tool employed in business together with technologies like Business Process Management Systems (BPMS) to increase productivity, reduce costs, becoming more agile, and improve information exchange between organizations For many universities, becoming digital has been the way to face the changes in research, teaching and learning patterns Some institutions have adopted virtualization and digitization technologies to provide access to information anytime and anywhere is needed They are constructing systems around 108 Emerging Technologies and Universities communities and people as well as collections In addition, some universities are buying or licensing materials from external providers and making them accessible to a local audience Ibid Administration and Support Almost all carried out activities in a university are collaborative activities This means that these activities are performed by a group of persons with different backgrounds, this is because not all workers in a university are teachers or researchers To teach and research has been the basis for the reputation and ranking of universities Besides teaching and researching as the main activities, there is another group of activities as important as the firsts because without their concurrency the academy could not succeed These activities are related to the administrative process and system support In the Administrative processes underlay the academy’s ability to perform any task, because the administrative staff assumes the responsibility to develop the strategic planning and execute it Therefore, any success in teaching and researching is supported by the decision allowed by administrators Many activities are under the responsibility of administrative staff and all of them possess the same importance For example, the administrative staff must maintain accurate financial records about income and expenses for accountability This is valid especially for public universities where a substantial portion of the money comes from the government Another task of the administrative workforce is Human Resource Management All workers have a career structure that must be fulfilled In the same way, another administrative staff has the responsibility of the student admission process, student management issues, student academic records, student occupation, and training Another group of workers provides support to administrative staff, teachers, and researchers These people are considered support staff and they are responsible for meeting/diary management, information system support, and campus management between other tasks As you can imagine, if a university decides to be an open university or a digital university all its processes must support it, including the administrative and supports areas But these areas in traditional universities are full of cumbersome and bureaucratic processes, some process are still paper based that requires large warehouses and people spending a lot of time in document handling Regardless of the academic concern, the London report on higher education (Dearing, 1997) noted that a sustained effort to improve the effective and efficient use of resources by institutions is required to secure the long-term future of an expanding higher education system In concordance, Incheon declaration (UNESCO EDUCATION 2030, 2015) states that, Innovation and ICT must be harnessed to strengthen education systems, disseminate knowledge, provide access to information, promote quality and effective learning and deliver services more efficiently These declarations and others claim for effective and efficient use of resources Money can buy almost any resource except time Time is the most valuable resource, especially in the digital age where the service must be online and just on time A company can reach its business goals in an efficient and effective manner only if people and other enterprise resources, such as information systems, play together well Business processes are an important concept to facilitating this effective collaboration (Weske, 2019) Many leading universities have turned to ICT technologies to be more efficient and productive They are appealing to 90th-decade methodologies like Reengineering and Business Process Management (BPM) These methodologies have been promoting that the key to be a successful business is to use resources effectively and efficiently BPM is a set of methods and techniques to support the design, administration, configuration, enactment, and analysis of business processes A business process is a 109 Emerging Technologies and Universities set of activities performed in a coordinated fashion by the organization and technical environment This technical environment allows processes to interact with other processes into the organization or with other processes in other organizations Ibid Some technologies have been added to BPM like ICT, process Automation, document digitization to create specialized software called BPMS (business Process Management System) For many years BPMS has been the cornerstone for improving productivity and reducing costs and has represented a competitive advantage for many successful companies In addition, BPMS has developed specialized architectures depending on the requirements of the organizations Some BPMS could be based on workflows known as workflow management systems, others based on web services or service-oriented (Waas, saas), and others based on data called data-driven management systems The goal of BPMS is the management of a firm’s end-to-end business processes In the case of universities, all paperwork can be automated through workflows and digitizing technologies Digitizing documents (converting documents to digital information) offers to the organization a substantial reduction in the use of physical documents, storage, and recovery time This reduction in time will significantly boost productivity and efficiency Workers will spend more time on activities that add value than on routine activities BPMS can be used in all areas of the university where performance needs to be optimized If artificial intelligence is incorporated in process automation, it could generate processes that self-redesign, self-define and will be in constant innovation FUTURE RESEARCH DIRECTIONS A few examples of how 4IR technologies are influencing universities have been mentioned above These technologies are transforming universities into open universities or virtual universities But there are other aspects of the academy that are promoting these changes and they deserve to be studied Some topics are, today, in the hands of researchers or at least they have been placed on discussion tables for following consideration A point of attention should be placed on all new technologies that are emerging and are combining into what is known as Distributed Online Education Some of these applications are working on an unknown space in the education field It is necessary that these technologies go hand by hand with the development of innovative pedagogical models This leads to propose the following questions The constructivist educational model developed in the last century and widely used today, remains as the appropriate pedagogical model for the open university? Is it necessary to develop alternative cognitive models based on digital competences? Another topic of research could be the impact on society and culture of this becoming open and virtual education model It is necessary to identify whether this new mode of education will be enough to produce a workforce able to increase the competitiveness of the local, regional, national, and multinational environments If this alternative model is valid, it will allow developing countries move forward to from their actual status? Otherwise, It the outcomes of this model will intensify the current differences between countries? Moreover, the higher education system is a research topic itself The university as part of this system that is shifting the paradigm from the brick and mortar educational institution to an open and virtual university What should be the new administrative, financial, and service models for this modern university? What is the new digital curriculum and the best way to implement it? What kind of instruction 110 Emerging Technologies and Universities must universities offer? What kind of learning-space is required to develop this new kind of university? What will be the teaching strategies for this new model? CONCLUSION The fourth industrial revolution (4IR) that is driving the automation of knowledge has modified the behavior of the actors These changes are reflected in all areas of society, their impact on socio-cultural and economic areas area being increasingly evident But its impact has been different depending on the regions, cultures, and economies While the first world countries maintain their technological axis based on their economic power and are therefore able to capitalize on any technological advancement In developing countries, current technologies have made them consumers, because due to a limited budget and resources they are unable to convert their own research and knowledge in products and services These facts have further increased social and economic inequality, which is reflected in the constant manifestations that periodically occur in each country of the world calling for better opportunities for access to resources In the university’s context, 4IR technologies have transformed the way we learn, teach, and research Internet technologies are presently the modern classrooms where learners interact in their own way These technologies have constructed an alternative learning space This learning space is shared with students, professors, and researchers Universities are making efforts to belong and take over this learning space This learning space is completely undefined, and it is barely in their beginnings The learning space will migrate according to the role of socio-cultural and economic actors and according to the applications that can be developed in the field of education The future of universities has been treated and described by some authors (Peters, Raschke, et al), but as we know, these are the best assumptions about what will come Some of then are present now and we still are learning how to adopt these new technologies, despite the ethical, social, cultural, and economic problems that it entails The best assumption is the universities in the future will be global learning spaces Institutions where knowledge will be free, universal, and democratized And the knowledge will be accessible by all without distinction of class, race, culture, or religion REFERENCES Anderson, C (2008) Wired Retrieved from Wired Magazine: https://www.wired.com/2008/06/pb-theory/ Association for Learning (2012) The SCARLET Project:Marrying Aumented Reality and Special Collections Retrieved from https://newsletter.alt.ac.uk/2012/06/the-scarlet-project-marrying-augmentedreality-and-special-collections Barnes, C (2014) eLearning Industry Retrieved from https://elearningindustry.com/education-andtraining-what-is-the-difference Bollier, D (2010) The Promise and Peril of Big Data Washington, DC: The Aspen Institute 111 Emerging Technologies and Universities Dearing, S R (1997) Higher Education in the Learning Society Report of the National Committee of Enquiry into Higher Education Londres: HMSO Del Pino, D (2018) e-Branding académico aplicado a la Educación Superior Retrieved from Universidad de Valencia: https://riunet.upv.es/handle/10251/111832 Dempsey & Malpas (2018) Academic Library Futures in a Diversified University System In N W Gleason (Ed.), Higher Education in the Era of the Fourth Industrial Revolution Singapore: Palgrave Macmillan Gleasson, N W (2018) Higher Education in the era of the Fourth Industrial Revolutión Singapore: Palgrave Macmillan doi:10.1007/978-981-13-0194-0 International and Development Education Series (2016) The New Flagship University: Changing the Paradigm from Global Ranking to National Relevancy Palgrave Macmillan US Jahanian, F (2013) The Networking and Information Technology Research and Development Program Retrieved from NITRD: https://www.nitrd.gov/nitrdgroups/images/9/92/Farnam_Jahanian_-The_Promise_of_Big_Data.pdf Johnson, R L (1997) Seeing things as they really are Retrieved from Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/ forbes/1997/0310/5905122a.html#4fabe58324b9 Johnston, B., MacNeill, S., & Smyth, K (2018) Conceptualising the DIgital University, The Intersection of Policy, Pedagogy and Practice Palgrave Macmillan doi:10.1007/978-3-319-99160-3 Lewis, P (2018) Globalizing the Liberal Arts: Twenty-First-Century-Education In N W Gleason (Ed.), Nancy W Gleason - 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