Digital Transformation in Higher Education

Michael:          So when you talk about educational disruption, it’s disruptive to your fundamental business model isn’t it, to the revenue and how you make money and your relationships to students and administrators, faculty, researchers. So this disruption in higher Ed. is very pervasive through the fabric.

Georgetown has been experimenting in this era, first with an initiative called technology enhanced learning. Where we had faculty submit proposals of how they would embrace and leverage technology in the classroom.

And then that has gone onto another initiative called, designing the future University. Where now it’s not at a course level, it’s at a curriculum level. So, a lot of the data shows now that a three-year BA is imminent. How do we change what we do structurally to be able to support changes in a traditional curriculum, where bachelors required four years to get a bachelor degree, can we do it in three years? Can we do a three-year BA/MA?

If you think about the structural changes necessary to allow that curriculum to change, that’s really where the impact is. A lot of discussion with online learning, adult learners, and the revenue model now brought together with online learning and really catering to that adult learner.

...this is where the experimentation and the lessons learned really come into play, as we start building and shaping the institution of the future, is that MOOCs showed us what parts of our curriculum were generic and interchangeable and what parts can be pulled out of the curriculum and delivered at a lower cost. Such as, intro to statistics, intro to biology, 102 level courses. So absolutely, I think it will change the business model and it’s forcing us institutions to think about how do we would embrace it. It goes back to the structural changes that we need to make. And how we do business, how we think about the business, what curriculum that we offer, which also impacts the cost of that education as well,...

...how do we enhance the learning experience for our students. How do we personalize that experience? And I think that’s where you’ll see institutions go more and more, and what will be a different differentiator.

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you know, at one point may be technology made you have a competitive advantage. But technology today is table stakes,...

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Michael:         So tell us about the link between digital transformation and cultural change inside the organization.

I don’t think we can talk about digital transformation without thinking about cultural transformation, because I believe they go hand in hand.

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We leverage these digital disruptors that our students were demanding and were bringing them into the fold as well and the modernization and strategy, by delivering a mobile platform. And then figuring out where we engage with our students. So not making those decisions in a vacuum, but embracing our stakeholder community and our students to help us figure out what is important to you on these mobile platforms,

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We have very strong academic partners, so technology cannot do this alone.

We’re a partner and an enabler.