ICTs in Universities: Stakes and Reality

Pedagogical innovations, including Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), are at the center of many changes in the universities currently part of the Bologna Process. When European universities invested massively in deploying technologies, their effectiveness was not really questioned, at least at a pedagogical level. After experimenting for several years, the time has come to consider the real place of ICTs in universities. Does technologizing in higher education represent a beneficial questioning of pedagogical methods or can it be considered as a certain admission of weakness? It seems hard to deny what ICTs can bring to a classroom: a driver for changes, a redistribution of the roles and maybe a solution to the actual challenges. However, on the other side, with the sociology of uses, we can notice a dangerous gap in the practices that we find in and out of university. We feel therefore justified in asking whether universities are on the wrong path, considering (outdated?) ICTs. Between the hopes, challenges and reality of practices, it seems now essential to question the place of ICTs in higher education.