Why Universities Must Embrace Digital Transformation

In the digital age, students' lives are intertwined with technology, from their smartphones to their laptops. Regrettably, the university experience often lags behind this digital immersion. Universities are predominantly composed of fee-paying students and a much smaller percentage of full-time employees. In this landscape, universities must acknowledge students as their primary customers and understand how best to meet their needs.

As a result, higher education institutions are undergoing an education digital transformation to bring their systems and technology in line with student expectations and enhance their experience.

But what's the way forward for universities faced with a disconnect between their technological offerings and student expectations? What kind of technologies can they implement, and what are the benefits for both students and the institutions themselves?

Traditionally, universities have been under pressure to do more with less. This has led to an environment where many institutions are laden with traditional IT departments that no longer align with the modern university landscape. Today, universities utilise numerous applications and systems across the organisation that students need to access. The need for these systems to interact presents a significant challenge - a challenge of higher education data integration.

University leaders are increasingly recognising the adverse effects of this issue. Integrating their systems appropriately is seen as a way to improve efficiency, achieve economies of scale, and provide a better experience to students. Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) will be crucial in this process of linking different systems together and eliminating data siloes, paving the way for efficient API integration in education.

A committee is currently working on standardising APIs across institutions. By creating a minimum standard, universities will be better equipped to handle some of the data governance in education issues they face, such as protecting students' privacy rights and maintaining accountability for safeguarding restricted data.

With system integration and data governance in place, universities will be better positioned to deploy technologies such as cloud computing, artificial intelligence (AI), and machine learning (ML) in their campuses. Implementing these technologies can drastically increase higher education system efficiency, and by using APIs to share data, they can also tackle the problem of education data interoperability.

AI and machine learning in education can offer several benefits. By leveraging these technologies, universities can make more informed use of their data and gain more profound insights that can improve the student experience.

Making systems more efficient allows universities to allocate resources for other initiatives as part of their digital transformation journey. With the availability of funding, universities can then incorporate the latest technologies into their campuses. The focus will be on enhancing education with digital tools such as cloud services, AI and ML.

As universities start to provide their own cloud services for their industry, the need for expertise in this field becomes paramount. With the right support, they can enhance their offerings and scale their services. A robust data platform for universities can enable them to evolve and develop new applications and processes to be used across their network.

The digital tools can also find their way into classrooms, becoming essential resources that students use for research. This adoption will ensure that higher education institutions can use data meaningfully and ethically.

Choosing the right technologies to implement depends on various factors, including the type of university (research-based or teaching universities) and their unique funding streams. This will directly impact the budgets available for technology and the types of technology they may adopt.

By integrating these technologies properly, universities can ensure smooth implementation and derive maximum value from them. In turn, these institutions can offer better experiences for students, embracing the technologies that are so ubiquitous in all other areas of their lives.

Look out for the next blog in this series to uncover how higher education institutions can also implement new technology as teaching devices to arm their students with the skills they need to enter the workforce.

In summary, technology implementation in universities is not just a trend; it's a necessity. IT solutions for higher education can streamline processes, improve student experiences, and enhance overall performance.

The road to university digital innovation may be challenging, but the benefits are well worth the journey. By embracing digital transformation, higher education institutions can unlock a wealth of opportunities, not just for themselves, but more importantly, for their students, paving the way for a brighter, more innovative future.

To learn more, contact a member of the InterSystems team, here.