 There's a really strong tradition looking at the ways in which digital technologies can be used to support and enhance student learning generally and also what people would think of as deep approaches to learning. There was a lot of research in the 1980s that looked at digital technologies as what were called cognitive tools to support students with skills such as elaborative thinking, organisational thinking and self-regulation. From my perspective, the most useful ways that digital technologies can support students taking a deeper rather than a surface approach to learning is through learning design. We might develop through learning design opportunities for students to engage with conceptual simulation or problem-based learning tasks or some sort of peer-based collaboration. And these learning designs will inspire students to do particular things in classrooms that invite them to be critical thinkers and self-regulators and to think about problems in ways that are not surface-oriented. The ways in which digital technologies can be used therefore sort of dovetails with those learning designs. Some of the affordances of the technologies that arrived on our desktops in recent times like social media or Web2 technologies are really quite closely aligned with some of those learning designs that I mentioned. And the work we're doing at the University of Melbourne with our Graduate Online program is thinking really carefully about the ways in which we can change learning design and pedagogical models as we move into a wholly online environment to support those deep approaches to learning. This includes the kind of structures and support that you need in terms of learning design and then the ways in which we can employ technology to support those learning designs. I think the short answer is they most likely can, but it does raise an interesting point about synchronous and asynchronous communication within digital environments. Often face-to-face communication is held up as something of a gold standard for collaborative activities with synchronous communication. But if you make a distinction in the temporality of conversations, communications and collaborations online and you make allowances for the temporality of communication, then I think that you're in a much better place. There are technologies at the moment that allow people to engage in synchronous communication around artifacts in virtual classrooms that emulate a Skype type arrangement. But there are also a range of asynchronous technologies that can be also used to emulate these types of conversation. The frisson, the vibrancy associated with conversation often needs to be synchronous. But there are also aspects of conversation, so thinking particularly about things like review and reflection, where it's quite useful to have technologies that allow you to pause and reflect on what another person is saying. And that's where asynchronous communications can be a useful layer on top. I think the main message here is not to view digital technologies as being some sort of saviour or tools that will solve a problem. The real issue is providing students with tasks and activities that encourage them to engage with an approach that is associated with those principles of deep learning. And then think about the ways in which technology can be used to support and facilitate that. Digital tools can sort of supercharge learning design, provide options and opportunities for you that otherwise might never be available.