Digital approaches within the humanities education system: integration challenges
Authors:   Ural Federal University named after the First President of Russia B. N. Yeltsin, Stepanchuk Yulia A. , Kirillova Natalia B. ,   Ural Federal University named after the First President of Russia B. N. Yeltsin
Published: January 2025

Introduction. The relevance of this research is based on the well-known fact that the challenges created by the
digital revolution sharpened many problems within the humanities education. The object of our research is the
process of integration of digital approaches into the traditional teaching of humanities as one of the most important
challenges faced by contemporary higher education. Digital technologies have already changed and continue to
change not only teaching methods and approaches but also the very concept of humanities as a specialized field of
knowledge. Within this process, we face innovations that quickly transform into an everyday practice and become
embedded into the pre-existing academic and educational processes (access to digital information sources, ease of
information production, demonstration and presentation etc.).
The aim of this paper is to analyze the process of integration of digital approaches in teaching humanities as one of
the most important educational challenges faced by contemporary university.
Materials and methods. Since this paper is interdisciplinary in character, its methodological research base relies
on integrative conceptual approach allowing us to bring together general theoretical methods (analysis, synthesis,
generalization) with cultural, historical, contextual and competence-based research methods. Such an approach
provides ample opportunities to introduce existing theoretical and methodological toolkit developed by the
humanities in order to understand problems and specific features of digital society and digital culture. Both in
this methodology and in content, the concept of digital culture as a research object does not contradict practices
established within humanities, but rather can be interpreted as a new area of study.
Results. The results of our research demonstrate that digitalization of society led to the emergence of new
themes in the humanities and within the education system: criticism of the “black box” character of contemporary
digital infrastructure; issues of inequality and discrimination created or supported by digital tools; social effects
of digitalization (including its impact on children and young adults); data-related problems: who, how and under
what conditions creates, distributes and uses data in contemporary culture and society; anthropological approach
that studies interactions between humans and digital technologies; cultural representations of digital technologies:
images and narratives that circulate in society and are used to visualize and describe digital phenomena in film,
literature, internet, social media etc.
Conclusions. The authors conclude that the situation surrounding digitalization of humanities presents a field both
of new problems and new opportunities. However, despite the existing issues, humanities research and education
constantly produce new models and methods of interaction with the digital reality, which can and should be
confidently introduced in education constantly experimenting with the new approaches.