Watch the video of M&S Director of Higher Education, Kate Hazen, addressing some of the big challenges facing Higher Education IT Administrators in the coming year. Contact us to discuss how we can help you meet these challenges.

– Video transcript –

With the increased pressure on higher education along with diminishing budgets, higher education IT organizations are faced with some difficult decisions in regard to where to focus valuable time and resources. I believe three key areas should be addressed:

Number One, there should be an increased emphasis on training and support for faculty and students in online technology usage.

Although many faculty report that they were able to transfer their content to online technologies, many of them say that they lack the ability to keep the students properly engaged. An increased emphasis should be applied in helping faculty learn the technology and understanding some best practices on how those technologies can be applied in the classroom.

Number Two, an increased emphasis on administrative business processes.

As we have all talked about and thought about the impact on faculty and students of the current pandemic, many of us have lost sight of the fact that all of our administrative operations were required to move online to virtual offices. As a result, many of these processes that were built for in the office work, passing paper, doing the workflows has now had to move to virtual offices. Let’s couple that with again decreased budgets in those areas and reductions in staff, these areas need to be addressed.

Finally, I would put an increased emphasis on data and analytics.

We are inundated by so much information every day, it is paramount that our administrative officials be provided the best data and analytics about their institution, and other institutions, in order to make the quickly adjusted decisions that they’re going to need to make over the coming months and year.

I think, if we look at these three areas again, one, the increased help for faculty and students with technology and the support that’s needed, two, a relook at our administrative processes and use of our systems, and three, the increased reliance on good, quick, data analytics will be three of the pivotal changes that are needed in the coming months and years within higher ed.