Digital transformation paves a path to success in education

Greg Kovich

August 05, 2022

Education has changed forever. Digital transformation offers an avenue to achieve positive outcomes and when students succeed, schools succeed.

We’ve recently talked about digital transformation and the six steps to student success and we explored how it can create a campus community for student-centric success. Now it’s time to turn our attention to what digital transformation means to educational institutions as we move into our new normal in a post-pandemic world.

While the events of the past two years have not been without challenges — and in many cases challenges that forced us to find new ways of doing things, quickly. From elementary, to higher education, from five to twenty-five (and then some) students, educators and institutions were challenged to stay-the-course and remain engaged and connected. The role of technology throughout that time cannot be under-stated. Now, as we continue the journey, understanding the digital transformation that has taken place and what needs to happen next is key.

Digital transformation drives the future

An evolving digital transformation strategy is essential to revitalise campuses and ensure technology decisions contribute to positive student and school outcomes. Organisations such as EDUCAUSE are strong advocates for digital transformation in higher education and offer excellent resources to help schools better understand requirements, technologies and processes.

From those resources, it’s clear that whatever digital transformation strategy an organisation embarks on, the alignment of IT technologies with the institutions’ mission and budget, sets the foundation for what’s most important for both the student and the institution. It is critical to provide resilient, agile and cost-effective IT operations so institutions are better prepared to respond to economic downturns, unexpected crises, and cyberthreats.

Additionally, technology that keep students engaged with the institution, before, during and after their academic experience can create a competitive advantage over other schools. It can position the institution as a recognised leader enabling them to reap the rewards of a strong financial outlook and future growth.

A partner for success

The right digital transformation partner understands the challenges schools face today and the path to delivering a truly successful experience for students and schools. Deep knowledge of campus-wide digital transformation strategies is essential to deliver the technology, security and learning resources that colleges and universities require not just for today, but into the future. Following are some key things to think about:

• Understand the challenges you are trying to address and what technology you can leverage to make it happen

• Build a smart campus foundation that provides a high performance, secure, and flexible communications infrastructure

• Create student-centric platforms, technologies, and applications that put the school’s resources into the students’ hands

• Provide solutions are easy to install, use, and manage

• Ensure robust cybersecurity measures to provide end-to-end resiliency

What’s next in the new normal

The world’s experience with the pandemic over the past couple of years has confirmed that digital transformation is essential for academic success and prosperity. Bringing the right parties together provides a common vision for success.

A campus-wide digital transformation strategy can create a virtuous circle of benefits for students, future students and the school. And, when students achieve better results, they enjoy their time on campus more, they share their positive experiences with others and create good will for their institution. Digital transformation is key to unlocking these pathways and experiences.