The COVID-19 pandemic has affected the worldwide economy and at the same time it has also beaten up the education industry in both developed and developing countries. The life of the students has severely affected as they are no longer able to attend the physical classes. The impact has made the education providers in implementing technology solutions to enable remote teaching and learning. In the post COVID world, the digital transformation in educational industry is not limited to online teaching and learning.
The digital transformation had begun to take hold in schools and education as a whole even prior to the pandemic. Little technological advancements were made in schools and educational institutions. Teachers learned how to incorporate computers in their classes and how to use technology. For students, social media platforms became a crucial part of socialization and engaging with peers. When the COVID pandemic appeared, it has only accelerated these trends. With the emergence of pandemic schools and educational institutions were forced to adapt to the digital transformation. This has highlighted not only the value these tools can offer to the schools but also the challenges that have to be faced throughout the transformation.
Digital Transformation- challenges
To understand how a sustainable transformation can take place, it’s important to know about the potential challenges that an institution might have fac. Understanding these issues van solve the problems to some extent.
Hesitation in adapting to the changes
Presently almost those institutions operating in the public sector feel that their capabilities fall behind those in the private sector. Apart from this the decision makers are reluctant in taking the next step to digital transformation. It always been a custom that people tend to keep the old things in its original way and are reluctant to step out from their comfort zone. The main problem is that they fear failure and seem reluctant to acquire new skills and changes.
Lack of skill, knowledge and personnel
To adapt digitization, there requires an adequate level of confidence, skills and knowledge. Currently many top companies are struggling to fill the vacancies on STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) as there has been a wider gap on digital skills. In order to ensure smooth and efficient digital transformation, educational institutions are needed to compete for a narrow pool of talent and adopt new approaches on advanced technology.
Lack of digital transformation strategy
Unlike other industries, educational industry doesn’t need a firm strategy or a starting point to adapt to digital transformation. This digitization causes a significant change across many spheres of operations. The starting point and a firm strategy are difficult to find but they are necessary for bringing a change over education system.
Unclear data
Educational institutions need not worry about lack of information on students, their classes, or schools, as a whole as the data is available online. The institutions lack the capability to integrate the data completely into the system. They often collect it in silos, sometimes with the marketing team capturing information on website engagement and the administration collecting information on applications, acceptance rates, course completion, etc. but the main problem is that the departments fail to bring the data into a single localized system and this ultimately leads to lack of critical knowledge concerning prospective users, engagements of students, and the ability of institutions to carry on the complex processes.
The institutions may tend to depend on the incomplete and inaccurate data to make crucial decisions. An important aspect of digital transformation is that there should be complete knowledge on the data collected. This data will provide the institutions with an opportunity in enriching and enhancing the overall educational experience of the students and staffs. Therefore the management has to find tools that will help in data analysis, which will enhance the whole education system.
System compatibility
Nowadays most of the businesses and institutions run on technology – driven systems and infrastructures to ensure smooth and effective flow of operations. An intrinsic challenge is that the system adopted by the institutions is not compatible with the new digital innovations. At this level, it is necessary to upgrade, customize or replace a current system to achieve integration which is costly and time consuming.
So, what are the solutions?
Develop a strategy
Any significant change or innovation in an organization starts with the development of a strategy. The strategy should be developed in such a way that it can be understand easily by the management as well as the people related to the organization. The organization must work collaboratively to create a solid digital transformation strategy for the enterprise. An organization needs to identify its core business aims and goals, as well as the technologies, methodologies and innovations that are needed to be achieved on time. Once it is done an action plan is needed to be prepared and the same has to be communicated with the stakeholders within the organization.
Investment in personnel
As stated earlier the world is facing scarcity of talents and skills. The primary goal of an educational institution is to educate and train the staff, so that that they can thrive and succeed professionally. By adopting an advanced and meaningful strategy, the institutions can implement a digitally-driven learning programme which will provide the staff with required skills to evolve their roles which in turn will help in digital transformation. Investment in training and knowledge development will ultimately drive the business in the best possible direction.
Integrating and leveraging digital data
It is essential to integrate and leverage data in order to retrieve enormous strands of data. Seamless flow of data can be ensured with the help of latest e-learning standard called The Experience API (X API). It is a new learning technology through which wide amount of data can be collected. The Experience API has made the data transactions simple and flexible. It has helped to lift the older restrictions.
Automation
Around 49% of companies across the globe are currently using automation. More than half of the B2B companies have adopted this technology as part of their strategy.
When it comes to education it could improve the value of the institutions and will also enhance the digital maturity. It should be noted that time constraints and limited budgets can cause a great deal of strain in the modern educational institution.
By implementing automated systems and technologies, it will assist the administration with operational workflow. Productivity can also be increased with minimum infrastructure, cutting down long-term costs and allowing focusing on more valuable efforts and activities.
The power of mobile
Current generation is focused hugely on mobile. It is said that 985 of 17-24 years old and 97% of 25-34 years old owns a smart phone. To attract this importance of digital transformation and e-learning the idea of mobile mindset can be adopted. Mobility is a necessity for the modern age. Mobile learning is an incredibly effective way to deliver value to the education system. But the mobile based development doesn’t have to be limited to course material. Michigan University in order to understand the mental health of the students, they have Applications like these are a testament to the power of mobile in the educational sector.
Implementing and harnessing the power of technology to understand the needs, preference on target audience will direct the institutions in right path towards digitization. It may seem like a scaring prospect, but digital transformation comes with endless benefits for the educational system. And if one wants to flourish in a competitive world, the changes have to be adopted today.
To know more about digitization in education sector contact our sales team at sales@elviserp.com.
