A new survey reveals that the leaders working at universities and colleges are pretty much ill-informed about the latest digital transformation and digital learning.
The survey included the presidents, CEOs, and CFOs who scored poorly in their survey results. Only 30% of the leaders are very well engaged with the new technology, while just 40% of them have a decent knowledge. The rest have a lot to learn.
The survey was conducted by the Campus Computing Project (CCP). CCP began in 1990 with the aim of helping American universities cope up with the latest changes in information technology. As per Casey Green, who is the founder-director of CCP, this is a striking and alarming result, especially in this era.
Most of the education leaders today went for their higher education way before digital learning was implemented and thus they haven’t been able to grab on to the trend.
With the everyday ongoing hustle in the American higher-education, leaders have been busier in developing new policies or managing finances. However, this is the present and the future.
Thus it becomes the responsibility of IT officers in the university to see to it that every leader is well equipped and informed about digital learning.
OPMs taking charge of digital learning?
Another reason for this is considered to be universities outsourcing their work to online program managers (OPMs) who build and manage the programs on the behalf of the universities.
According to the digital learning survey, university leaders were more than happy to hire OPMs as it is more ‘effective and viable’ for the university.
OPMs have been at the center of debate across the whole nation. OPMs work for for-profit organizations and outsourcing them simply hurts the non-profit status of universities. As OPMs charge more, universities are bound to increase their tuition. However, some do believe that OPMs have been making quality courses for students.
Another aspect of the survey was data security, which is another pressing issue nowadays, as universities collect data from thousands of students. There were only 34% of IT officials who believed that their institutions’ data security is excellent.
Technology is now not an option anymore. Rather, it has become a compulsion because there’s nothing that technology has not impacted. As a result, officials should be well educated, at least about their university’s programs.
