The term ‘digital transformation’ appears frequently in discussions about the opportunities and challenges of modern education, and with good reason. It is reshaping the way that universities and schools emerge, operate and develop.
The four main pillars of digital transformation are empowering staff, engaging customers, optimising operations and transforming products. When it comes to how digital transformation is making life easier for higher education professionals, there are many moving pieces.
Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise is a French-based organisation providing enterprise communications services to businesses and educational institutions worldwide.
Below, The Educator speaks to Pierre Samson, APAC head and senior vice-president about the importance of leaders embracing digital transformation and how Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise is assisting universities on this journey.
TE: In your organisation’s blog, it was stated that “for a university to digitally transform its campus, the cultural side of the equation is just as important as having a good technical initiative.” Can you elaborate on this?
Digital transformation is at its core, about change. Human Beings don’t always embrace change, so it is important to include instructors, administrators and even staff on the reasons for the technology changes that are about to be implemented, and the benefits they can expect. Students no longer learn solely by lecture. Learning is interactive and Institutions must digitally transform to meet the demands of students, faculty and campus to create a collaborative and personalized learning environment. They need an intelligent Campus where everything connects with technology that simply works. Beyond the technology that enables the academic student learning and success there is a whole cultural element to today’s campus that is digital. Students need 24/7 access to teachers and administration; they need connectivity that allows them to stream movies and music, play games and create social media content. In short, they demand all the on-campus services that they enjoy at home.
TE: In your view, what are the most powerful benefits of embracing digital transformation for a university’s executive team?
Today’s students are digital natives. This means that traditional styles of teaching will not be as effective as those that leverage the student’s comfort with technology. This means blended learning, online courses, greater use of ‘external’ resources like video, blogs, and articles. By adopting a digital transformation, the university will be able to attract new students, retain those students and even attract and retain passionate instructors.
The rate of change at universities are so great that the executive teams can no longer be totally proactive because technology changes so fast that it is almost impossible to predict what will happen two semesters from now, let alone a year. They need to also be aggressively reactive in real time to meet the ever-changing needs of the students and faculty. By dealing with potential problems before they become problems, digital transformation allows executive teams to grow the reputation of their universities. Digital transformation also provides mass notification which allows executive teams to communicate on and off-site when wanted, but also provides real-time contact and coordination with students, emergency crews, parents, and neighbours off site when needed.
TE: In what ways are Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise meeting the emerging demands of students, instructors, and administrators?
Student centricity includes providing students with the network access and performance that they expect, but ALE also can provide the university with a cognitive communications platform that can be embedded in the campus mobile app, maintaining communications from application to alumni status. We have also brought to market the University Partnership Program that includes seed equipment of WiFi, Location Based Services, and a cognitive communications application (Rainbow) and their APIs, SDKs and tutorials – permitting students to create integration projects that provide them with real-world experience – from user requirements to technical requirements to finished product.
Secure Campus is about ensuring the correct people are granted the correct access from any device, from any location in the network at any time of day – administration, students, faculty, staff, contractors and guests. This provides one more layer of defence in the Cybersecurity battle that is ongoing every day in Higher Education. Safe Campus is about providing the tools to help the university become aware of an actionable event as soon as it happens, to coordinate and collaborate with first responders and to deliver mass multi-modal messages to the community (multi-modal = SMS, Rainbow group/individual text, audio broadcast to internal/external PA speakers, ALE phone speakers, social media and devices like strobe lights and digital signage).
Smart Campus is about providing the network management tools that allow efficient management, swift remediation of any issues and predictive analysis of potential troubleshoots in the network. This ensures that the information superhighway on campus (the heart of the digital transformation) is reliable, secure and high-performance. Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise is helping universities meet their demands by offering the most holistic communications solution in the industry that focuses on three main pillars: student-centricity, smart campus, and safe and secure campus. Putting students, instructors and administrators at the centre of technology with an infrastructure that lets them be collaborative, keeps their information secure, keeps them personally safe in a way that is easy-to-use and manage.
The blog referred to earlier in the article is 'Five tips for building tomorrow's intelligent campus' and can be read here.