6 IT leaders share advice on leading transformation in education

Every university offers something different to the people that work, research, and study there. Culture, technology, geography—all these factors come together to construct a unique experience at each institution. That experience is then massaged to attract and retain the best students, researchers and ultimately, funding for future success.

It makes the drive to improve the teaching and learning experience front and centre and a unifying shared objective. IT teams are subsequently under pressure to deliver flexible, scalable, and secure solutions that create first-class, engaging, learning & teaching environments.

To help you walk this tightrope and strike the right balance, we’ve gathered top tips under three areas, People, Process and Technology: all sourced advice from university trailblazers, technology experts, and solution architects.

People

• Understand the appetite for change where technology is concerned — organisational culture is such an important consideration
• Consider, measure, and address the collaborative, creative, and mobile working ethic
• Customer (user) satisfaction needs to be the influential heart of your decision making
• Training and adoption should be focused on staff and research — for students, its not a revolution, digital and cloud is standard

Process

• Break down silos and focus on service delivery, not technology or products — a cohesive solution is critical
• Don’t be afraid of change – pilots and trials mean you can test and evaluate new technology with limited impacts
• Stay on top of user experiences, feedback and service levels
• Major risk is to remain static – not trying new ideas!

Technology

• Enterprise architecture holistic approach – collaborate like you want your users to!
• Find best of breed solutions which match your needs, culture and appetite for change – offerings in this category will always be better than that you can achieve on your own
• Ask for help, find those that have tried it already, those that have succeeded and ask them how and why. Leverage external viewpoints
• Maintain a stakeholder focus on a future viewpoint or status, so that everyone is working towards the same goal