What’s Preventing Universities from Improving Students’ Digital Experience?

The report, prepared by artificial intelligence provider Ocelot, suggests that many higher education CIOs find themselves in a challenging position. Many are required to show how they support institutional key performance indicators, such as enrollment and retention, yet persistent pain points hamper their ability to do so, including lack of funding, siloed systems and strapped IT teams managing complex systems.

Meanwhile, universities are striving to demonstrate value to students in the face of rising tuition, increased scrutiny of student loan debt and fears of an enrollment cliff. Amid all of that, one of the most powerful ways to attract and retain students is by creating an exceptional user experience. That’s where it often gets complicated.

Wi–Fi Quality Is Closely Tied to Students’ Perceptions

In some cases, an institution’s biggest hurdle might be foundational, says Mark McCormack, senior director of research and insights for EDUCAUSE. When EDUCAUSE surveyed students about their technology experiences in 2023, they overwhelmingly indicated that high-quality internet access is a prerequisite for a positive technology experience.

“Those two things are inseparable,” McCormack says. “When we asked our students, in general terms, ‘What could your institution do to improve your technology experience?’ far and away, most students went to Wi-Fi.”

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Kathe Pelletier, EDUCAUSE’s senior director of community programs, says another base expectation is a well-designed, frictionless user experience — the type students are accustomed to as consumers. Incorporating best practices from journey mapping and user experience design can elevate the quality of apps and other tools to ensure students find them useful rather than annoying.

For example, when the University of Arizona completed a digital experience mapping effort, it revealed “how incredibly disparate the user experience was across these systems and how jarring that experience was for students trying to understand how to complete simple tasks,” writes university CTO Darcy Van Patten in an article for the EDUCAUSE Review.

At the same time, institutional differences can also create constraints on enhancing students’ digital experience. Pelletier notes that a small, rural community college with fewer resources than a large research institution might use third-party apps rather than custom-designing its own.

Another area where institutions may struggle when budgets are tight is the back-end infrastructure necessary to support a comprehensive, well-integrated experience, such as sophisticated data storage, management and governance.

“They might have more individual apps that feel disparate and disconnected because the data doesn’t talk to each other,” says Pelletier. “A better-resourced institution is likely to smooth out all of those transitions and have better data on their students because they can pull it from different sources.”

Effective Digital Experiences Are Accessible and Inclusive

McCormack says students’ perceptions of “seamless” also depend on individual students and how well an institution accommodates diversity. EDUCAUSE found that 67% of students are generally satisfied with their institutions’ technology support. However, that drops to 35% for students with mobility impairments and to 39% for students with sensory impairments.

“For the institution, there’s an opportunity to listen to and better understand those within-student and between-student differences and to do the work to raise awareness among the students of the services and supports that exist,” he says.

To that end, universities are becoming more intentional in how, when and where they leverage technology, Pelletier says. Often, that’s an effort to dial down the “digital noise” that can arise when tools proliferate without an overarching strategy — for instance, students having to log in to multiple apps when one would suffice, or receiving disjointed communications from various departments.

But Pelletier says she would frame these challenges as an opportunity. “The more we seek to understand our students, the better we can design the entire experience in a way that’s holistic and appropriate to what students on a particular campus might need,” she says.

UP NEXT: Shenandoah University’s device program standardizes student technology.