Transforming a higher education campus into a technology-driven institution of the future requires collaboration among administrators, curriculum designers, the technology department and library staff.
This was the main message of Laura Niesen de Abruna, Provost, and Ilya Yakovlev, CIO, both of York College of Pennsylvania during their joint keynote presentation during Fierce Education’s recent Higher Education: Technology- Profiles in Success, Fall virtual event. During their keynote titled “Technology Transformation: Navigating the New Decision-Making Paradigm”, they detailed how York College of Pennsylvania was able to transform from one that had almost no digital footprint, to near complete faculty buy-in. The session is available on demand and can viewed here.
Niesen de Abruna began the lecture by going back to 2016, when she first joined the college’s administration as provost and references to “on-campus technology” meant email. But she knew immediately that a transformation into a tech-integrated campus would require support from all corners of the institution.
“In higher ed we have a shared [interest] that we all have an equal role in getting ideas across,” she said. “I had the research to back the digital transformation, but I knew it wasn’t just about bringing it to the table.” Beyond adjusting the curriculum in the classes themselves, staff had concerns about losing the income that comes from residential life; a fear of digital classes cannibalizing on-campus courses; and the belief that online classes catered only to non-residential students.”
Eventually, Niesen de Abruna and her team created near universal buy-in and an almost 100% transformation by joining the forces of curriculum development, the IT department and the school library.
Niesen de Abruna’s next step in the transformation was to change the role of IT from a team that outfits dorms with WIFI, to strategic players in the academic advancement team. In fact, she started hiring academic designers who would report directly to IT in order to change the academic hierarchy.
Once a core team was established, the next step in York College’s digital transformation was to push technical boundaries into new areas of interest such as student retention, career building, scheduling software, etc. The college invested in Canvas, Enterprise and the Starfish platforms, to name a few.
“Online in the pandemic, we were successful but for one reason: we invested in technology well ahead of COVID-19, so it wasn’t that difficult for us to pivot,” Niesen de Abruna said. “We never had to completely close the campus, ever.”
The session was then turned over to Yakovlev to discuss some of the IT adjustments he helped to institute at York College during the pandemic. For example, laptops were mailed out to staff and students who needed them. Faculty were given VPN accounts to access school software from home. Additional Zoom and test proctoring licensing were purchased and distributed to faculty. WIFI hotspots were added to parking lots and central gathering spaces on campus. In addition, the school opened a Zoom help desk where students could log into without an appointment and speak with someone live. Finally, the library and IT departments merged to combine their expertise.
When offering advice to other institutions revamping their technology structure, Niesen de Abruna noted: “It’s more important to build a consensus than to build quickly.” In other words, don’t rush through the process of implementing strategies and equipment if the staff is not on board.
Plus, she recommends building a leadership team that has staff from academic affairs and IT so that all of the students’ best interests are taken into consideration. York College currently has a team of 10 people who actively seek new technological solutions to help forward students’ academics and enrichment.
Yakovlev agrees that a strong technology team, such as that at York College, consists of several instructional designers, librarians, trainers and a learning management system administrator.
Moving forward, after the pandemic, a lot of the best practices instituted by York College will continue. For example, faculty now see the value in asynchronous class recordings as it forces them to take their classes into specific learning modules. And following the No. 1 gripe that online learning was not engaging, faculty will continue to look for software programs and curriculum design that integrates active participation in student learning.