Digital Campus - a workshop

I have just spent the morning at a two-hour Digital Campus Workshop, which was a session to carry out a SWOT analysis for a Digital Campus Strategy.

Now if that first sentence doesn't makes any sense to you, then don't worry, please read on, and I will explain (if the above does make sense please feel free to jump ahead to the sub heading "The Workshop").

What is a Digital Campus?

This is a good question, and so far I have not been able to find anybody that has been able to give me a good answer!

To me a Digital Campus is as it suggests, a campus that is digital, that is, it is a campus in which things are carried out digitally. Now, this seems like a somewhat circular argument, but I can assure you it isn't. As I see it a Digital Campus has 3 main areas, teaching, research, and support (support encompasses everything from the IT infrastructure through to administration, that is 'support' supports the 2 core functions of a university i.e. research, and teaching). The idea is that each of the 3 areas uses the digital tools that they require to carryout their function and that the necessary data and support easily flows between the 3 areas.

What is a SWOT analysis?

A SWOT analysis is an examination of the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats of a situation (hence the S, W, O, and T). In essence it involves sitting down, looking at the situation, and then identifying the features that fit in to each category. (More information is available on Wikipedia.)

The Workshop

In the workshop we were asked to carry out a SWOT analysis of the Digital Campus Strategy with the idea that this would inform the development of the strategy. So, what did we come up with? (Please keep in mind that I'm viewing this very much from my own perspective as a lecturer, and what I am reporting here is the “broad brush strokes".)

Strengths: The current system works (if it ain't broke don't fix it) - this was more a reference to infrastructure as opposed to the strategy; generally good local support; we have a monoculture (by this I mean that one operating system is used across campus therefore making support and training easier).

To me none of the above really are strengths in terms of a strategy. What about: Willingness to accept change? Openness to new ideas? A drive to give students and staff the best possible experience?

Was the workshop really saying that we had none of these strengths? Personally I think we do…..

Weaknesses: The weaknesses list was worryingly long, and included the following: Inconsistent support; lack of access to expert users; failure to utilise the current systems; inconsistent use of systems across campus; no eLearning strategy; a lack of tools to easily share data; lack of dissemination of solutions; monoculture possibly staff stifling creativity; lack of horizon scanning; lack of support for personal mobile devices; a lack of support for student facing services.

Again, nothing here is really of strategic importance other than possibly the lack of horizon scanning (by horizon scanning I just mean looking to the future and seeing what may be heading in our direction), and a passing comment to mobile devises.

Opportunities: Now this is where I thought it would get interesting. What are the opportunities? What does the future hold? What should we be thinking about?

The opportunities were defined as follows: improvement of digital literacy; developing a communication strategy; innovation; user focus on the strategy; flexibility to meet change.

Threats: During this part of the workshop we came up with the following: not looking at competitors; fragmentation across campus; lack of training; inconsistent use of the virtual learning environments; not understanding what students want; changes in academic delivery; a failure to deliver on the strategy; security threats; compliance versus innovation; monoculture; academic freedom (I am not sure what this last point meant_.

Now interestingly in this section we were getting into some strategic areas, in particular the development of the learning landscape, fragmentation of systems across campus, and the way virtual learning environments are used. Most interesting was “not understanding what students want" which is something I've touched on before – see "What do students want in a smart phone application?".

Summary

So, what one make of all of this? Well, to be honest not a lot.

What I was hoping for from the session was a more strategic overview, a discussion of what the future may actually hold, and how we can meet it. Sadly, and worryingly, that didn't happen.

But, why do I say worryingly? Well, I think higher education (and not just in the UK, but worldwide) is going through one of the most radical periods of change in its history. I know that has been said before, but I think that this time it might be true as we appear to be moving towards a “perfect storm" of conditions in the education sector that may shake things up to a point that what emerges after the "storm" may not be recognisable as the "higher education landscape" we see today. And that will be the subject of a future series of blog posts - it was just a shame that we didn't get to discuss it today.

Image: Wikimedia - a ship in a storm

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Digital Campus - a workshop

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