We truly live in transformational times. Many of us have gone from listening to the radio to the occasional TV programme to the non-stop informational juggernaut that is the internet, all within the span of our adult lives. Contrast that with the incoming class of 2012, a “digital native” who is at ease with online collaboration and an information-everywhere lifestyle, one that forgoes the pen and notebook for a dazzling array of gadgetry. Isn’t it about time your Campus 1.0 got a 2.0 upgrade as well?
It isn’t easy, as is evinced by the scores of half-baked greatmerely- on-paper technology initiatives we’ve seen in institutes of all shapes and sizes across the country. Beyond the mere installation and acquisition of technology, institutes need to today look closer at integrating its use throughout the entire fabric of the institution, while at the same time balancing the twin challenges of rising information technology (IT) costs and the need to avoid technological obsolescence. Most campuses approach the problem on a piecemeal basis, bringing some domains upto par with the best of the industry, while forgoing modernisation in others. What’s sorely needed are individuals at the helm, typically a CTO/CIO, who understand the dynamics of each of the technology domains we’ve discussed over the course of this story, and how their interplay affects each stage of the education lifecycle.
For most institutions looking to leverage technology, especially young institutions started over the past few years, the challenge will be to attract and retain such talent — a skill made rarer so, by the lure the core IT sector has for exceptionally talented technologists.
Over the course of this special issue, we’ve tried to delve deeper into each of the elements of a higher education institute — right from marketing, admissions and college administration to teaching, placements and alumni relations — to bring to you the key considerations that keep CIOs at top institutes awake at night. Add to that the insights of several leading academicians and technologists about the impact of technology across the higher education landscape, and you have in your hands a primer for your own technology roadmap for 2012 and beyond.
Technology Strategy: Marketing
Use online tools
Numerous online platforms can help you spread the word
There used to be a time, not so long ago, when information came to our target audiences via a handful of newspapers/magazines and a solitary TV and radio network. Today, the very same people you wish to reach out could be SMSing, emailing, chatting online, playing online games, reading up from an aggregated news feed, and to make matters worse, all of these could be happening at once!
At EDU, we have highlighted in the recent past the importance of getting the marketing communications right by way of social media and your web presence. A recent study by Noel Levitz and National Research Center for College and University Admissions titled the “2011 e-Expectations Report: Students and Parents” (available at http://bit.ly/ug9JFR) reveals some telling facts, many of which are highly applicable in the Indian context. For instance, many students removed a university from consideration because of a bad experience on the college’s web site. Or that a high percentage of prospects will provide their email addresses, but more critically, it helps to ask them directly for it in your communications/ website. Or that students zero in on the academic courses section of your website, often ignoring the other sections altogether. Or even that parents play a key role in research and final decision-making. What impact do these insights have for your outbound communications and web presence?
To begin with, strive to design with your target groups in mind — parents, families and students. If that means putting your academic programme front-and-centre on your website or at least via a simplified navigation, so be it. Ensure that your website shows up high on the Google rankings for your specialty subject areas and areas of research. Pepper your web initiatives with videos of alumni and the campus experience, and don’t forget to collect contact information from your web visitors when they arrive. From there on, start a gradual lead generation process — construct automatic emails that go out with the intent of informing rather than pure ‘admission conversion’. Guide the student, be generous with information,without immediately focusing on the RoI. And beware of being ‘spammy’ in nature — it is too easy to mass-blast email using modern mass email software, but it is equally easy to be marked as a sender of spam. Curate the lists based on expressed interests, and segment the communications accordingly.
Of course, your website is for all practical purposes an island unless you integrate ‘social’ into your marketing DNA, and drive traffic to your website from the popular social networks. But social media presence goes way beyond just setting up a Facebook page or a dormant twitter account. To be relevant in information-overloaded times such as these, here are some ideas worth exploring. You could, to begin with, create a Facebook fanpage based around an education theme and owned by your brand e.g. a page dedicated to helping students understand the challenges of undertaking a degree, with the wall and discussion groups used to ask and answer questions and share concerns/advice. Taking it further, twitter can be positioned effectively as a customer service tool — that allows prospects to direct questions about your establishment and courses. The key is to staff this twitter account with someone knowledgeable enough to provide advice and respond ‘socially’ to comments about the brand. Use a social media-monitoring tool to monitor conversations related to your brand and products, and join in the conversations, not to push your story but to help people. Allow prospects to peek into the way of life via multiple channels — be it a Flickr photo album of your buildings, classes and management team or YouTube videos of lectures, seminars — anything that will give future students a flavour of the culture of your institute.
Technology Strategy: Admissions
Make admissions digital to reduce paperwork
Online admission applications can reduce stress for you and provide instant information for prospective students
As the first step in what will hopefully culminate in a lifelong relationship with a prospective student, the value of the admission process cannot be overstated. From the moment a student reaches out to you via your electronic or offline points of presence, it is imperative that the process be made as smooth and transparent as possible. And with the rapid proliferation of internet connectivity across the country, the onus on maximising the use of technology to reach out to hitherto inaccessible applicants lies in your hands.
A good place to start is within your own admissions office. Does it depend on archaic paper based systems for the bulk of its transactions? If so, it is critical to consider the implications of taking this department online via a dedicated section on your website. Will you be switching over completely to digital applications, or maintain a more complex hybrid model to allow for a more inclusive approach towards traditional applicants coming from Tier-B and Tier-C cities? Timing is critical too — a rollout immediately after the conclusion of an admissions process is recommended, which gives you sufficient time to test the system in the real world before the first student even attempts to register and submit an application, several months later. As far as choosing a system that manages application submissions goes, while there exist some ready-made solutions in the software market, a bespoke system that meets your specific needs and scale and integrates well with your existing infrastructure (document management systems, current workflow etc) is what you should target. Tufts University has put together a great list of questions you should ask the software development vendor (http://bit.ly/tehZVb) to plan effectively for a new software system.
Now, while the question of which technology to use and how to deploy is fundamental, even more so is having a strong Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system at the core of your admissions department’s technology strategy. CRM systems incorporate robust data management features with communication tools that can reach students in multiple ways: via email, text messaging, and social media integration. Often replacing paper-based strategies such as letters and direct mailing, CRM systems improve institutional efficiency and centralise efforts in one place allowing you to send out timely yet cost-saving electronic communications to targeted groups of prospects at different times of your admissions calendar. Instead of costly snail mail communications, students can be directed instead to personalised Web pages that track and assist them at various stages in the application-to-enrollment cycle. Take a look at http://bit.ly/tiX83v and http://bit.ly/vUT8tv for a comprehensive case study and tips on the measured benefits and impact of a CRM system in the admissions process.
One thing that bears mention is the delivery model of these systems. With strong ERP/CRM systems in place, more and more institutions are coming to resemble conventional enterprises. However, unlike traditional businesses which are strongly investing in software-as-a-service (SaaS) delivery models, experts we have spoken to, caution against a pure SaaS model, suggesting institutions gun for complete integration with their workflow and internal systems rather than be enamoured by the low-cost per-user, per-month story alone.
And finally, the age of push-based admissions is nearly over, and admissions officers must think like a sales team. Instead of starting at the wrong end of the sales funnel — the application — they should start at the stage where the prospective student is just starting out his/her university selection process. When the admissions team catches more students at the top of the funnel, more students will ultimately end up applying for the course. What does this translate into? Increasing inbound marketing strategies to provide prospective students with the information they want and need, early in their decision making process, gaining their contact information and nurturing leads through email, and effectively using social media including Facebook, twitter and mobile-ready websites. Bear in mind, this is not the Admissions Officer’s responsibility alone — all of these require a strong alignment with the Marketing/Communication/ Web Office to pull off successfully.
The shift to digital admissions systems can today make the difference from confusion and easy access to information, from staffassisted decisions to self-service decisions, from 9 am to 5 pm to 24-hour availability, from postal-mail-time to real-time and from cheque/DD to electronic credits. Which one will you choose?
Technology Strategy: Administration
Build a seamless and secure campus
Getting a good ERP, a wireless network and IT security are no more just “nice to have”
As administrators and CIOs of your institutes, one of the largest and most mission critical technology decisions you make is that of deploying largescale technology across your campus. Be it decisions on connectivity or enterprise software, or preferring local storage over the cloud, each of these decisions needs to be considered with sufficient internal expertise, or failing that, external consultants, before even inviting the first tender.
Take the internal wireless networking for example. The benefits to faculty and students is immense — increased flexibility of working and learning across your campus — and come with the bonus of a solution that comes without the hefty price tag and administrative overheard of traditional wired networks. But it isn’t without its own set of challenges. Once students and faculty start relying on the wireless facilities not as a “nice-to-have” capability but as one critical to their everyday existence, the growing pains start. Particularly affected are the dense user environments like classrooms, libraries and common areas which see a drop in accessibility, plus the issues around bandwidth hogging applications like video streaming sites and web conferencing (not to forget illegal peer-to-peer downloads in hostels). Strong IT policies, which allow genuine users to take advantage of the flexibility while limiting the casual surfer, are the order of the day.
With ubiquitous wireless internet, can the cloud be far behind? In these days of budget cuts for IT spend, hiring an exclusive IT team to maintain hardware and software services is a tough ask, and many colleges are turning to internet based services for their infrastructure needs. Many administrators we’ve spoken to who were looking at setting up student and faculty email systems have been wary of the infrastructure and 24-hour manpower required for email services. For such folks, Google’s email, contact and calendar apps, commonly bundled into the Google Apps suite is a great way to get the email program up and running, plus it benefits from the familiar user interface and easy access over mobile and portable devices.
As your campus matures and increases in scale, it could perhaps signal the need for you to undertake the most demanding and complex technology project ever undertaken on campus — an internal ERP implementation. Consider the benefits — not only does an ERP systembring a number of disparate systems, such as admissions, registration, accounts, employee management and class scheduling under one application suite, but it also adds a layer of transparency to the entire set-up. Students can, for example, file-in leave applications or document/proof requests on the system and the system automatically seeks appropriate predefined approvals in a streamlined, time-bound fashion.
Yet, all it takes is one compromised system to bring your systems and networks down to their knees, which is why security has to be on every campus CIOs radar from day one. More so with students being early adopters of technology, the IT staff manning the network have to build in support from these new devices. Add to that the increase of worms and viruses through social media like Facebook and twitter, and it becomes even more critical to build in infrastructure that can quickly identify which devices are infected and revoke access to them until deemed safe.
Technology Strategy: Classroom and Teaching
Turn classrooms interactive
Use technology tools effectively to ensure lively discussions
Stop the presses: college and graduate students are increasingly using technology in the classroom. But then again, you didn’t need us to tell you this — walk into classrooms of today, and you’d be hard pressed to find one without a multitude of laptops, e-book readers and smartphones, all riding the way of data on the information superhighway. Today the question is not whether to use technology in the classrooms or not, but rather how to channelise the information overload into productive classroom discussions and learning. Bear in mind, the tools are copious — we can but hope to scratch the surface of the many ways technology can benefit the classroom of today into shaping the students of tomorrow. Rather than prescribe specific technologies — each classroom and teacher is unique and will adopt differently — here’s our take on the trends that will define the classroom of 2012.
First, expect an explosion of interactivity in the classroom — no longer is the lecture a one-sided monologue to a class of blank, unresponsive faces. Today, teachers are tapping into twitter to ensure more meaningful discussions mid-class, and are regularly calling up multimedia content and videos to better illustrate the subject at hand. For example, Professor Monica Rankin at the University of Texas at Dallas regularly uses twitter tags to encourage a more upgraded form of ‘note passing’ in class, allowing for far richer class discussions than she had previously seen. Elsewhere, teachers are pulling in content from sources as basic as Youtube and Wikipedia to as rich as MIT’s OpenCourseWare project and other Open Educational Resources (OER) to add layers of interactivity to the experiential learning in-class.
Given how web-aware students are as they are entering higher education these days, Web 2.0 technologies will drive heavy collaboration in classroom assignments and learning in the coming years. Podcasts of lectures that render taking notes in class passé, blogs that encourage commentary alongside learning, wikis that allow student groups to construct small ‘pools of knowledge’ on a subject area, and gaming simulations that allow students to try simulating stock-market conditions will continue to revolutionise the classrooms of today.
Yet, traditional courseware is anything but outdated, finding new life in the electronic avatars. While e-books have steadily grown in popularity among consumers, adoption by the academic community was slowed by issues such as a limited number of available titles, restrictive publishing models, and rights issues. As more and more portable form factors like tablets find their way onto campuses and the classrooms, expect them to drive e-book publishers to ramping up their efforts.
As teacher-student interactions evolve, expect the classroom to transform as well, with tools such as touch-enabled whiteboards allowing the students to get up and out of their seats and interacting with educators and their peers in a meaningful collaborative manner. As we walk out of the classroom, expect to see a more connected campus, with mobile phones allowing real-time alerts for class schedule changes, emergency information and campus news wherever the student is.
And finally, we foresee that in the classroom of tomorrow, with students coming armed to class with the wealth that the web can provide (and the textbook can never replicate), teachers themselves will increasingly assume the role of the co-learner and turn this into a classroom advantage — engrossing class discussions guaranteed!
There are, of course, proponents of the alternative approach — that of “teaching naked” or without the use of the machines, a return to a pedagogy which eliminates computer slides in favour of lively classroom discussions.
Technology Strategy: Placements
Use IT to know recruiters better
Use closed door forums to get to know what employers want. Streamline placements with help from CRMs and scheduling softwares
Campus Placements. Get them right and they take pride of place in your brochures and marketing collateral, trumpeting the collective achievement of your industry associations and student talent to prospective students and the larger community. Get them wrong, and the prevailing economy can ensure students struggle to land jobs in companies of choice. That said, technology has definitely caused significant changes in the job search process for students and their career services officers.
With the knowledge of job sites and recruitment portals, students have the ability to research companies 24/7 and are better aware of the market than ever before. How can you as administrators leverage technology to assist students in their campus placement effort?
A good place to start is your alumni base, and starting closeddoor forums on LinkedIn (or via live webinars) which allow select alumni to interact with your student populace is a great idea. Coach your students, possibly via sessions with experienced recruiters, on how to craft the perfect online profile — one that meets the needs and expectations of prospective employers. In addition, focussed career content can be useful in getting students into the correct frame of mind while recruitment season is underway. Career-themed blogs (on your intranet) with experiences of recently hired students (among other similar user generated content) can get students geared up and avoid common pitfalls in the recruiting process. If Facebook is the de facto standard for groups for your students, consider a closed-door group to allow positing of job announcements and company visits as events.
At the same time, reaching out to prospective employers is critical, and the placement in-charge should be savvy regarding the latest social networking trends, so as to track hiring news from prospective employers closely. Many companies advertise their plans on their respective websites and social media pages, which becomes a key input for institutes vying to get these companies on campus. In today’s day and age, it almost goes without saying that your institute’s website should be employer-friendly, possibly with a separate section for prospective employers. Such a section should clearly outline information such as the batch profile, past placement data and list of recruiters. Above all, an easily identifiable mechanism to contact the placement office and to post job openings should be made available. For instance, the BIT Mesra campus placement page at http://bit.ly/rFNMYl makes it easy for potential employers to view this information and reach out to the placement office.
Much like alumni relations, placement relations is a delicate balancing act, and requires much of the same organisation skills in terms of a contact management/CRM system that manages the needs of the institutes to stay on the ball with corporate contacts while being sensitive to their hiring needs/strategies.
Technology Strategy: Alumni
Keep the old boys network alive
Develop an online community and use CRM effectively to keep the network alive
Be that they may have passed through the doors of your institution years ago, alumni or the ‘old boys network’ continues to remain one of the most critical faces of your institution in society. Right from a foot in the door for placements to mentoring current students to be ready to take on the challenges of tomorrow, from advocating to potential students to in some cases, giving back by way of grants and scholarships, the relevance of staying in touch with, and connecting with alumni on multiple levels cannot be overstated. Yet, the balance is a delicate one—how does an institution use technology effectively to keep in touch with their alumni and allow them to give back to their alma mater, yet not overwhelm their already hectic lifestyles?
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