Management

3 Tips for Successful Digital Transformation in Higher Ed

What does it take to carry out DX?

Twitter

Wylie Wong is a freelance journalist who specializes in business, technology and sports. He is a regular contributor to the CDW family of technology magazines.

Higher education, like every industry, embraced digital transformation (DX) when COVID-19 forced universities and colleges to pivot to remote work and online learning. EDUCAUSE defines DX as the process of optimizing an institution’s operations, strategic direction and value proposition. But it also requires coordinated culture, workforce and technology shifts.

That means creating a culture that embraces change, adding new roles and training staffers to implement DX. It’s also more than just one-off projects; it’s a larger, coordinated effort.

Blow, is a look at three examples of higher education digital transformation success — and the most important strategies for implementation.

1. Create a DX Strategy After Taking Inventory

The first step to creating a strategy is to take inventory of your technology and meet with stakeholders. Matthew Hall, the new CIO at the University of Central Florida, is doing just that. “We are in the middle of an assessment. You can’t go where you want to go until you know where you are,” he says.

2. Focus on Inclusiveness and Accessibility

When building new applications, the team at the University of Southern California meets with faculty, staff and students to understand their needs, says Veronica Garcia, USC’s associate CIO of application services. The IT staff takes a mobile-friendly approach because some students use smartphones as their primary computing devices, she says.

3. Digital Transformation Is an Ongoing Project

Brown University takes an agile approach and continually adds new features to its mobile and portal apps, says Brown Chief Digital Officer and CIO William Thirsk.

peshkov/Getty Images