Digital Transformation in Education: Key Points

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The rapid evolution of digital is having a significant impact on corporate industries and is serving to provide exciting new opportunities, maximise efficiency, increase collaboration and reduce costs. As the education sector becomes more competitive, digital transformation in education is becoming a necessary means of survival as this new digital world requires educators to adapt and adopt digital technologies, methodologies and mindsets.

Educators at a compulsory education level or grade level have embraced technology, there is an increase in school funding to bring digital devices into classrooms. And with forms of educational technology becoming more valuable, the adoption of technology in learning is likely to gain further momentum.

But what does this mean for professional or work-based learning? In this article, we explore the potential challenges and solutions for digital transformation in the education sector to outline its importance, as well as the huge potential of adopting new, forward-thinking processes and mindsets.

Index
1. Digital transformation in education: the challenges

- Resistance to adapt
- Inferior knowledge or skills
- Data silos
- Lack of direction or strategy
- System-based compatibility

2. Digital transformation in education: the solutions

- Develop a strategy
- Hire, train and invest in skills
- Integrate and leverage digital data
- Automate
- Harness the power of mobile
- Experiment with emerging technologies
- Focus on digital citizenship
Digital transformation in education: the challenges
"The biggest impediment to a company's future success is its past success." - Dan Schulman, CEO of PayPal

To understand how a complete and sustainable digital transformation can be carried out, it is important to examine the potential challenges or obstacles that an institution might face. By understanding these problems, it will be possible to overcome them.

“Resistance” to adapt

Currently, almost 70% of those operating in the public sector feel that their chiropractor email list digital capabilities are behind the private sector. Despite this, many key decision-makers are reluctant to take the next important steps towards digital maturity.

Essentially, people tend to get used to doing things a particular way and are reluctant to step out of their comfort zone, resulting in stunted growth and progress. When adapting to a new technology, culture, or mindset, many in the education sector fear failure and seem reluctant to acquire new skill sets or processes.

Conclusion: To prevent this from happening, it is important to understand the benefits of digital transformation in education and communicate this to key stakeholders within the organization. Understanding and communicating the value is the key to success, so prioritizing this is essential.

Inferior knowledge or skills

To drive innovation, an adequate level of trust, knowledge and skills across the organisation is essential. There is currently a problem in filling certain types of vacancies in the education sector due to the digital skills gap.

To ensure a smooth and effective digital transformation, educational institutions must either compete for a narrow talent pool or adopt new approaches to upskill current stakeholders in areas from UX and CX to cloud computing.

Conclusion: There is a digital skills gap and to benefit from the skills you need to drive your institution forward, fostering a culture of continuous learning within the company, improving the skills of your current staff will help you make the most of the talent available.

Data silos

In this digitally-rich era, there are a wealth of metrics for colleges, universities and training providers to analyse about prospective students, internal efficiencies, user interactions and more.

The problem is that, especially in the education sector, this data is siloed, often making it inaccurate and unreliable. To understand the most usable and informative data, education leaders must make informed predictions, comprehensive business decisions, and adopt new educational initiatives that matter – and being able to receive fluid, timely, accurate, and organized data is vital.

Bottom line: By understanding what data will benefit your data the most, you’ll be able to dig deeper into the insights that really matter, filtering out metrics that are redundant or lack value, while choosing the tools that will help you organize and analyze them properly.

Lack of direction or strategy

With digital transformation in any sector or industry, one of the biggest obstacles to success is knowing where to start. Because the prospect of massive change can be overwhelming, it can be difficult to understand what direction to take or how to formulate a solid strategy.

Conclusion: To begin digital transformation, it is essential to obtain the direction and clarity necessary to forge a strategy, identify business models or processes that are not too simple or complicated, as well as the key efforts you will need to make to digitally transform them.

System-based compatibility

In today's world, the vast majority of businesses and institutions operate on technology-driven systems and infrastructure to ensure smooth and efficient daily operations.

An inherent challenge of digital transformation is that many systems adopted by educational institutions are not compatible with the new digital innovations needed to power them. This level of incompatibility results in the need to upgrade, customize, or replace a current system to achieve integration, ultimately costing time and money.

For example, Staffordshire University, realising the need for digital transformation, upgraded the majority of its internal data infrastructure to the cloud, marking a significant milestone in the institution’s digital maturity. Not only has this significant shift made the University much more efficient, but this cloud transformation saved the University a total of £4m in technology-based costs.

Conclusion: Work collaboratively with all key stakeholders within the institution to decide on software and infrastructure budgets and make decisions about changes, replacements, customizations, and upgrades that will generate the best long-term value.