13 November 2024 - The wind of change: key drivers to harness now for a brighter HE future
There’s a palpable wind of change in higher education’s digital space, which will see major transformation in what providers can offer and when, how, and where education is accessed and consumed. It is, in theory, a perfect time to create new and improved opportunities for institutions and students over the next few years.
This makes the education sector an exciting place to be right now. But while many institutions are willing and able to change, others are still holding on to the status quo or have limited resources to invest in transformative change. It means that for many, it is going to be increasingly important to prioritise spend wisely and effectively. This blog is trying to move us away from a tale of thorns and roses, winners and losers, into a more action-focused narrative.In recent years, it’s become apparent that knowledge, understanding, and collaboration are critical to change and innovation. Identifying the most impactful areas to tackle and rallying together the people, suppliers, and internal teams to solve these issues, will put you on the right track to success. There are five key drivers that underpin most change initiatives showcased across UCISA events this year that we believe if addressed (even if in varying degrees) will have a significant impact on your organisation:
1.The student's digital experience
Universities are increasingly mapping out the end-to-end student experience, from the first interactions to admissions, through to graduation and beyond to make this as seamless and accessible as possible. This is great news for UX professionals, who met at the first in-person UCISA UX conference this year. However, according to the consensus among the group, universities would get there much faster if they sought their expertise at the beginning of mission-critical initiatives, and not just to add the “finishing touches”.
The UCISA DIG24 Conference theme of the ‘smart campus’, put the spotlight on the integration of the digital and physical student experience, and the complexity behind the scenes to make this experience more enjoyable, sustainable, secure, and efficient. From 3D maps and wayfinding to desk booking and environment controls, there are many ways for the physical environment to be significantly enhanced by the digital.
But what about teaching and learning? According to the latest Jisc Digital Experience Insights Survey, 85% of interviewed students rated the digital learning environment provided by their higher education provider to be good, excellent, or the “best imaginable” – an increase from previous years. It seems that universities are making good progress, something that needs to be celebrated.
However, there is the question of equity that can hide behind these great statistics. More than a third of students had no access to suitable devices, more specifically international, Asian/Asian British and Black/Black British students. More than half of the respondents took paid employment to cope with the cost of living and reported this impacted progress on their studies.
Of course, not all universities are made the same, and some can afford to focus on enhancing the physical experience, while others are still at the start of their digitisation journey. The important thing is that they each know the needs and requirements of their students and take significant steps to meet them. Think inclusivity first, all students should have access to the tools they need to be successful in their course, something at the heart of our mission at AppsAnywhere.
2.Sustainability
Universities have always been an early adopter when it comes to corporate social responsibility reporting, as social mobility and improving social and economic outcomes for students and society is part of their DNA. Not quite the case when it comes to measuring its environmental impact, in part due to the large proportion of its emissions (70-80%) being linked to their supply chain. Having less control over the supply chain has put Scope 3 emissions in the “too hard” basket for a long time, but the sector is now showing more determination to exercise its purchasing power to push its suppliers to become green.
Tools like the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), PAIA (Product Attribute to Impact Algorithm) or the Greenhouse Gas Protocol are being more widely used to assess IT products, both physical and digital, and make better-informed decisions. These are good signs that the sector is starting to mature, especially as financial sustainability is top of mind for everyone. Looking at the whole lifecycle not only from an environmental perspective but also usability, adaptability, and financial return on investment can place the sector in good stead in these troubled times.
Important as these assessments may be, universities need to maintain common sense or run the risk of being at the mercy of large tech providers that can come up with the sustainability data, but without much leverage on pricing or tech development – VDI is one example. Since most of the technology supply chain are SMEs, it’s imperative that institutions work with their providers to create frameworks and gather data around the impact of their products. As is the case with software, once it’s been implemented in a university environment, vendors have little control over what data is collected and shared with them for reporting or improvement purposes.
And don’t forget the golden rule: Reduce, reuse, recycle! In that order.
3.Security
Last year (2023), 97% of higher education institutions experienced a cybersecurity attack or breach. Or at least, 97% noticed. That’s not all bad news. Yes, the sector is much more attractive to hackers, especially for identity exploitation, and yes, there may be a few more ways in than in other sectors (old IP addresses, for example), but what higher education does better than many, is identifying, reporting and controlling these incidents. According to ROC Technologies, the sector is more mature than any in maintaining comprehensive controls, including time, effort, and policies. Unlike other sectors, leadership, and management “get it”, they understand the risks and implications and are supportive of investments in this area.
Why is HE such a hot target? There are multiple reasons for it, some political, others commercial, but mostly because it’s possible, and particularly in decentralised institutions. Just to name a few:
- Lots of websites, domains and web real estate
- Collaboration and sharing of information – often set up by academics with limited cybersecurity knowledge
- Large attack surface: students, staff, academics, researchers, managed and personal devices, residential and teaching locations, IoT.
- Complex IT infrastructure.
To gain and maintain Cyber Essentials [Plus] certification, it’s important to try and remove some of the complexity of the IT systems and attach guardrails in multiple places. Lifting and moving the infrastructure into the cloud is not going to make it more secure, especially as Gen AI is making everyone an instant expert. Once they’ve got hold of our ID, hackers can use AI to replicate your processes in the cloud. Virtualising your software estate and streaming individual applications into virtual environments can make it more secure for students and staff to access them and reduces the risk of vulnerabilities in your systems. Being able to easily address any breaches within 14 days and apply new patches within that time can be labour intensive, but technologies like AppsAnywhere are great enablers.
When it comes to prevention, particularly in the collaboration “pandora box”, a few principles come in handy:
- Assume everyone will lose your data: if you can’t protect it, don’t share it.
- Be ready for each third party to be breached.
- Don’t forget to revoke access once the collaboration project is finished. Don’t share what you can’t revoke.
- Your data can’t be critical and undefendable at the same time.
(knowledge attribution for this section: Ade Taylor, Head of Security Services, Roc Technology)
4.Efficiency
It’s no secret that the UK HE is under financial pressure, and every institution, regardless of ranking, income, or location is looking to improve IT efficiencies. And while IT budgets and teams are being cut, demands continue to grow. Demands for improved student experience, sustainability, cybersecurity, and new technology adoption.
To do more with less, IT teams are increasingly seizing opportunities to consolidate, integrate, and automate processes, and collaborate across disciplines to improve efficiency. UCL and Imperial are good examples of IT collaborating with Estates teams to better integrate the physical and digital realms. From air quality to safety controls, to reporting repairs to managing occupancy, these tasks will eventually be automated, but so much effort and careful planning will need to go into it before that happens. What’s really exciting is the eagerness to start now, work with what exists, and keep building to reach the vision.
The age-old sayings “necessity breeds innovation”, and “with every challenge comes opportunity” ring true for the sector right now. Rather than reducing investments in new technologies, many IT leaders are choosing to retire legacy systems and use the financial constraints to invest in doing things differently. For instance, many universities are doing away with desktop computers, instead replacing them with laptops and investing in enabling secure BYOD. Win-win for universities and students, who prefer to use their own devices, and take their work outside of the university halls.
The life cycle view is also starting to replace the short-termism previously seen, with institutions becoming more mature in considering the lifetime return on investment of a product or service. For example, one institution realised the administrative cost of loaning laptops to students was larger than that of letting them borrow them for free, so they run a free medium-term loan scheme to help students without access to suitable devices.
In the same vein, staff hours are now gaining importance, with efforts to increase productivity by outsourcing and automating repetitive tasks. Software engineers don’t want to spend hours on end packaging hundreds of applications each time there’s an update, they want someone to take that off their plates. To better support the sector, technology will need to be more intuitive, do more of the heavy lifting, and provide actionable data and insights.
5.Data management and business intelligence
Many institutions have invested large sums in building and enhancing their physical estate. It is now time to do the same for their Digital Estate. Data is equally as important as bricks and mortar, it’s the institutions’ lifeline, the foundation that supports progress. The biggest challenge and opportunity, at the same time, it can be a blocker or an enabler, a double-edged sword that can get in the way of innovation or can be a catalyst for it.
Without good data, there is no Gen AI, but at the same time, once it’s collected, it must be protected and only used for intended purposes. The good news is that universities don’t have to manage it all themselves. The data management landscape has changed significantly, thanks to AI and automation. This allows universities to not only store their data more securely but also mine it for insights or isolate it for specific purposes with a fraction of the effort it used to take.
With Gen AI, institutions can make better use of unstructured data in a secure way and interrogate it in multiple ways to ensure insights are reliable. But before embarking on that journey, there needs to be trust and confidence in its traceability, integrity and validity, with better data ownership. Unlike other sectors, higher education has tons of new and legacy data, being generated at a tremendous pace, so it’s understandable why it is taking it longer to jump on the AI band wagon, but there are positive signs of progress in the right direction.
Once the sector of the custom-build, higher ed is now more open to standardisation, recognising the benefits of standardised processes and data, and being more willing to change internal processes and use a product as it was built if it achieves efficiencies. We’ve seen evidence of data creating more visibility with application and device usage data (which can be particularly hard to achieve across large and siloed organisations) and the impact on cost saving and resources as a result. While data is key to informing decisions, monitoring and reporting performance, it needs to be meaningful. We need to make a shift from a “catch all” approach – collect it all now and worry about it later – it's not sustainable, it produces more work to unpack and protect and can become a liability.
Breaking down the silos
When facing change, the “how” is just as important as the “what”, and what really stands out in the higher education sector is the willingness to collaborate, both internally within institutions and externally, between institutions and with their supply chain.
The five drivers mentioned above are driving institutions to become more open, evolve into learning organisations (not just teaching ones), and support each other to do better. This is not an easy balance to achieve when institutions are both collaborators and competitors at the same time. But what is admirable, and often taken for granted, is the set of values underpinning the sector, and the commitment to the success of higher education and the student, above that of individual institutions. Something we feel privileged to be part of and contribute to.
“Where there’s a will, there’s a way” they say, and the wind of change sweeping through the UK higher education, has a strong scent of willingness and determination, that leaves us optimistic that the sector will find a way to adapt and continue to thrive now and into the future.
With the power of collaboration more widely recognised, it seems like a good time to think of new ways to create and maintain strong partnerships, share experiences and problem solve around common goals. From platforms and forums to events, and more formal agreements, it’s time for us all to ride the wave together.
