What is the future of technology in higher education?
Higher Education Partnership Network North, 27 – 28 February 2024
Are you prepared for what lies ahead? At our HEPN North event on 27 February, Oliver Davy, Chief Digital Officer, and John Hill, Head of Digital Learning at the University of Derby delivered an exciting closing keynote where they discussed the future of technology in higher education.
During the session, Oliver and John talked about their experiences at the University Derby and provided some helpful tips for building inclusivity, encouraging open mindedness and preparing for the future.
Read our round up and discover how you can embrace technology in the higher education sector…
Enable your digitally confident workforce
In order to make the most out of technology, institutions need to train their staff to use it to its full potential. John talked about the training programme they put in place for academic colleagues at Derby. Their approach used ‘mandated’ and ‘compliance’ to stress the importance of these digital practices and encourage participation amongst their staff. While these terms have had negative connotations in the past, Derby uses these as a sign of commitment to progress in digital practice. Oliver stated, ‘It is about enabling that digitally confident workforce to do whatever it is they need to do, whatever that may be.’
Invest in flexible technology
When priorities are constantly changing, it can be hard to plan for the future. In order to keep up with ever changing demands, Oliver suggested that institutions should invest in flexible technology. He stated, ‘Your systems and technologies have to be amazingly flexible because they will end up being used for something very different than their intended use very soon.’
He continued, ‘Universities get pulled in so many different directions by governments and league tables and changing economic conditions. And it means that all you can do really is build for that unknown future.’
Build in governance
As technology continues to march on, it’s important that higher education institutions are building in governance alongside it. Oliver talked about governance and praised higher education for its inclusivity. ‘One thing I think higher education is quite good at is building inclusivity into governance and starting to think about equitable access to these things, so the people don’t get left behind.’
He continued, ‘Building these things into pedagogy in the way that we learn, the way that we teach, the way we do research in a way that is demonstrating why the future of technology being inclusive is very, very important.’
Commit to inclusivity
Continuing the conversation, John talked about Derby University’s commitment to inclusivity and listed some projects where they were able to make a real impact. This included an 18-month project with AbilityNet where they went through their digital accessibility model and were able to go from a bronze award to a gold award. He stated, ‘That gold label was about the appetite that the institutions got after sitting around the table and having those conversations about how we drive this forward.’
He also talked about a project to make the student portal more accessible, as well as the previously mentioned mandatory training to help recognise the importance that technology has, the potential impact, and making sure that it’s accessible and inclusive.
Throughout their work, Derby University were able to earn a Gold Tef badge through their efforts. Talking about their achievement, John explained that the badge was ‘for the quality of the narrative and the passion that’s happening at the university, and inclusivity was absolutely a theme running through that and the commitment to deliver that.’
Be open minded
While it’s important for higher education institutions to keep up to date with what’s going on in the sector, it’s not enough to just draw inspiration from what other institutions are doing. To keep up with technology, it’s important to be open minded, and consider how organisations outside of the sector can make an impact. Oliver praised the higher education’s willingness to embrace other perspectives, commenting ‘If anyone employs anybody or provides digital services, they’ve probably got useful things to say about how we can run those things and it’s great to be part of a sector that is embracing this. We see this all the time and we are all open-minded enough to bring in that external expertise.’
When it comes to technology in the higher education sector, are unique to higher education.
He continued, ‘Our future is about being open-minded to best practice coming from outside and bringing those great results into higher education.’
But being open-minded to the influence of others doesn’t just apply in technology terms. Oliver commented that when working with students, it’s important to be open-minded enough not to just ask their opinion on the solution that’s already finished, but to bring them and their opinions into the room while the solution is still being developed.
Embrace co-creating technology
This brought us onto our final thought of the session on how the future of technology is being co-created. During the end of the session, John spoke about how we can bring different voices and perspectives into the mix when developing these technologies.
Talking about the conference as a whole, John said, ‘It’s great that there are events like this where we’re coming together as a sector, but we also need to be listening to all those range of stakeholders as well.’
He continued, ‘We take approaches the same for the design of space. And we’ve had presentations earlier about how well IT services and their states work together, but there’s very much the students in the mix and we’ve run projects where that student voice has been in and around the table at the very early design stages, and it’s about making sure that voice is embedded in the technology projects.’
Join us at HEPN North next year