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Should we define higher education based on opportunities or based on constraints? Should we focus on problems or possibilities? It is up to higher education institutions to answer these questions for themselves, as Susan Grajek made clear right at the beginning of her presentation. It soon transpired that she is all for focusing on opportunities. Susan Grajek is Vice-President for Partnerships and Research at Educause, a US non-profit association whose mission is to further higher education using information technology. In her presentation, Susan Grajek talked about what is needed to make digital transformation succeed.
She showed that efforts in the field of online teaching were stepped up in response to the pandemic. In a survey carried out by Educause in 2019, only 13 percent of the participating institutions stated that they were supporting digital transformation. By 2021, that share had increased to 44 percent. According to Grajek, this development offers many benefits for higher education. First of all, digital transformation can encourage new, creative ways of teaching, allowing institutions to reach a greater number of students and a more diverse student body. It also allows for improving research methods, particularly in cases in which big data may be useful, and creating a safe space for international research cooperations. Second, digital transformation opens up economic opportunities. Greater flexibility enables institutions to react to emerging technologies more quickly and with more agility. New technologies may allow institutions to diversify their sources of income, making it possible for them to design new academic programmes and business ventures, enter new markets and launch new partnerships. Third, they also make it possible to cater to the individual needs of students, thus improving their learning experience.
Susan Grajek underlined that digital transformation was not only about making courses available in a digital format. Nor is it purely about digital infrastructure. Real digital transformation is much more than that. It is a fundamental restructuring of business models and strategies. Grajek sees digital transformation as a process of optimising and redefining institutions’ operations, their strategic focus and value proposition through fundamental and coordinated shifts in culture, workforce and technology.
Strategic planning should happen on the level of institutions rather than on the level of units or departments. Of course, this requires a lot of cooperation and alignment across different areas. Institutions need to streamline their decision-making processes to be able to respond more flexibly to new opportunities, risks and challenges. Institutions also have to learn how they can use data and analytics as a basis for taking decisions, tracking success and adjusting their strategies. “Institutions are drowning in data. Many know it is valuable, but they don’t know how to put it to use,” Grajek said. Data should be used to benefit the institutions, not as a source of power, but as a basis for learning and growth and adjusting an institution’s course, if necessary.
It is always people who make change happen. That is why Grajek also addressed the workforce and related responsibilities of leaders. “Our world of work is changing much faster than it used to. People will need new skills. New roles and jobs will need to be created,” Susan Grajek said. Institutions have to become better at talent management. Grajek thinks that it is always better to work with the people you have instead of replacing them whenever you need new skills. People should be trained to acquire these new skills, such as handling data. In the future, everyone will have to be able to interpret data and use it for their work. Diversity, equity and inclusion should become institutional core values. Institutions will, of course, also need the necessary tools for digital transformation.
Educause offers a self-assessment tool that allows leaders to determine if their institutions are ready for the transformation process. This self-assessment tool identifies areas to focus on and potential obstacles. For example, Educause has found out that about half of institutions lack sufficient cross-institutional planning and coordination. Costs are an obstacle for about 40 percent of institutions.
Susan Grajek then defined digital transformation as a six-step process, starting out with the questions of why you want to engage in digital transformation and which strategic goal you want to pursue. In the next step, you need to identify potentially relevant societal developments, the potential impact of digital transformation in your institution, and short- and long-term outcomes and outputs. In the sixth and final step you should then ask yourself what you need in order to implement digital transformation.
Some institutions’ journeys to digital transformation will be longer than others‘. Some institutions might prefer major changes, while others opt to take several smaller steps. Without any doubt, it is important for institutions to recognise digital transformation as an opportunity, not only for their own future, but for the future of higher education as a whole.
