campusreview. com. au policy & reform as everybody says … and justifiably so. I think none of us want our education to be turning on a dime every five years … so believe the hype, and don’ t believe the hype,” an innovation leader at an Australian university said.
Disruption may sound disconcerting, but universities appear prepared to meet this challenge. On average, they report being a third of the way through their digital metamorphoses.
DIGITAL PRIORITIES The report found that while students mostly want new university technologies to facilitate employment opportunities, universities largely think of tech as a tool that can improve their existing systems.
Students’ next highest priority was technology-enabled university administration processes. In this respect, universities are attentive: they are spending most of their digital dollars on enhancing the student experience; for example, through more efficient online learning and management platforms.
Brothers offered an example of this: peer grading, which“ a bunch of [ edtech ] startups are doing”. By having students initially mark one another’ s work, it takes some workload off overburdened tutors or lectures. It also gives students the opportunity to learn from one another.
He explained why and how most edtech ventures complement, rather than compete, with universities.
“ Most founders have recently left or dropped out of university, and are motivated by an experience that can be dramatically improved.
“ Most are starting at the employment end of the student life cycle.”
DEFINING‘ DIGITAL’ Most respondents tipped artificial intelligence as the technology with the greatest potential impact on educational institutions.
“ It’ s a big fancy word everyone is using now. It sounds fantastic, but we are still looking for ways to apply it that will enhance the learning experience,” Brothers said.
One possible way is using it to digest massive volumes of research to identify trends or patterns, or to find the most relevant information. Another is to power chatbots to assist students with administrative queries.
Over the past four years, Curtin University has invested heavily in digitising its campus and opening its doors( in the virtual sense) to the world, 24 hours a day, making it one of the most cutting‐edge universities globally. The vision for the university’ s digital transformation began after deputy vice‐chancellor Professor Jill Downie visited several overseas educational institutes and returned to Western Australia with ideas that would significantly enhance Curtin’ s learning model.
“ I immediately knew we had an opportunity for our students to engage with the world,” Downie says.“ Ensuring that experts from across the globe could come into the classroom with great ease at the touch of a button would offer our students a unique learning experience.“ This style of distributed learning is really important today in what is now a global age,” she adds.
To avoid disrupting thousands of students and professors, the large scale of digital transformation needed to make this vision a reality required a clear roadmap of innovation and integration.
By working closely with IT experts from Cisco, Curtin transformed itself into a 24 / 7 digital campus in a short period of time, offering students a unique, collaborative environment that spanned teaching, learning, research and innovation. Curtin Converged was born.
From Cisco’ s perspective, digitisation offers three main areas of growth that fit into Curtin’ s broader strategy: the ability to change the student experience, the
“ Routine‘ Q and A’ is taking valuable resources away from universities,” Brothers clarified.
A third AI implementation is using it to match students to career choices.
After AI, the next priorities on the‘ biggest potential’ list were the internet of things( the interconnection of all devices on the internet) and virtual / augmented reality.
WHERE TO FROM HERE? Brothers said he doesn’ t know how universities are planning for their impending disruption, but that this will be
CURTIN’ S CAMPUS OF THE FUTURE
ability to transform the business model( differentiating Curtin from competitors), and enabling greater staff productivity and engagement.
The university transformed, becoming a digital campus with 76 video-enabled classrooms, including a 180-seat videoconference classroom and new collaborative teaching spaces.
Cisco ensures that the network platform is a key enabler of the digital campus transformation, extending from the network fabric, including security to extensive wi-fi coverage and next‐generation collaboration software.
The introduction of these innovations gives students a mix of traditional lectures and classes where students review video lectures ahead of tutorials. Classroom time is now dedicated to exercises, projects and discussions with distributed learning techniques, such as massive online open courses( MOOCs), high-end video and 3D technologies that actively engage students.
“ Students now have a huge opportunity to engage with some of the brightest minds in the world,” Downie says.“ We believe that disruption of higher education globally is not a threat but an opportunity. What this transformation has given us is power – the power to change the student experience.
“ We work in a world of global higher education, it’ s not Curtin or Perth, it’ s not even Australia, we’ re competing now with the whole world. Our digital campus enables us to make sure that we’ re innovative, we’ re dynamic and that we remain competitive.”
a focus of a much larger, future Navitas Ventures survey. Qualitatively, however, he thinks shorter degrees of about two years’ duration may be one solution.
In the meantime, universities might use this survey to consider whether to speed up their digital transformations and, importantly, to allay any fears.
“ Universities should be embracing innovation rather than seeing it as a threat,” Brothers said.
Continued dialogue with edtech startups, he added, are more likely to help, not hinder, the change process. ■
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