When considering digital futures for universities it is the instrumentalising narratives developed by corporate ‘ed-tech’ which often drive the debate. These are narratives which, aligning tightly to marketisation, unbundling and other dominant ideological trends, describe a highly technologised, datafied and surveillant future for teaching. This future is often framed as an imperative, leaving university communities with the sense that a future is being designed for them over which they have relatively little control. This paper describes the theory, methods and outcomes of a project which set out to counter this tendency, using participative, co-design methods within a ‘top down’ policy initiative to envision an alternative future for digital education within our own institution.

Our starting point was that universities need to get better at crafting their own, compelling counter-narratives concerning the future of technology in teaching, in order to assert the agency and presence of the academic and student bodies in the face of technological change. In working toward this, we drew on recent thinking in anticipation studies in education and developed an original methodology for participative futures work within universities. The paper reports on the outcomes of this project, and its implications for the sector more generally, arguing that university communities can work to define their own digital futures through an emphasis on collectivity, participation and hope.

在考虑大学的数字未来时，通常会引发辩论的是企业“ed-tech”开发的工具化叙述。这些叙述与市场化、分拆和其他主要意识形态趋势紧密结合，描述了一个高度技术化、数据化和监控的教学未来。这个未来通常被认为是势在必行的，让大学社区感觉到一个未来是为他们设计的，而他们对此几乎没有控制权。本文描述了一个项目的理论、方法和成果，该项目旨在对抗这种趋势，在“自上而下”的政策倡议中使用参与性、共同设计的方法来设想我们自己机构内数字教育的替代未来。

我们的出发点是，大学需要更好地就教学技术的未来制定自己的、引人注目的反叙事，以便在技术变革面前维护学术和学生团体的能动性和存在感。为此，我们借鉴了教育预期研究的最新思想，并为大学内的参与式未来工作开发了一种原创方法。该论文报告了该项目的成果，及其对更广泛领域的影响，认为大学社区可以通过强调集体、参与和希望来定义自己的数字未来。