A Lesson from the River: Navigating Digital Transformation in Higher Education

Elisha Allen, Director, Online Strategies and Academic Technologies, the University of New Mexico

Elisha Allen, Director, Online Strategies and Academic Technologies, the University of New Mexico

For institutions to survive in an increasingly digital world and prepare our students to thrive there, digital transformation is a growing imperative. To get there, I’m happy to take a lesson from a fish

Although I’ve had unfortunate occasions where I’ve had to respond to rooms damaged by flooding, waterproof boots and waders are seldom needed to support teaching and learning technologies.

Nevertheless, standing in a stream in northern New Mexico with a fly rod in my hand inspired this article. As an expert in some things and a novice in many, I recently leaned on my adventurous spirit and signed up for a fly-fishing lesson. My beginner’s mind was not disappointed.

The first thing we learned was to look at the river and consider the behavior of the fish living there. To catch a fish, you must go where they are and consider what they need. In a river, fish look upstream for the insects and worms that inhabit the water and float down with the current. It is precisely the energy and the chaos of the current that bring food to help fish thrive and grow. However, spending too much time in that current is exhausting.

It’s needless effort to swim constantly and go nowhere. When they find the right spot, they can stay in the relatively calm and safe protected waters while the fast current nearby brings them what they need. Rather than expending energy on locomotion, they can use it to recognize and discern items of value.

For universities, the last 30 years have brought a constant stream of technologies to support and improve everything from teaching and learning to the back-end systems that facilitate the administrative work of the university. From the Covid-19 pandemic to the disruptive impacts of artificial intelligence, the speed of that current seems to be accelerating. Our job as educational technologists is to look up that river, find the tools and innovations to benefit our students, faculty and staff and try not to catch a shiny hook by mistake. If we can do that without wasting time and energy on projects that go nowhere, we provide more value to our institutions and more peace of mind to ourselves.

“For institutions to survive in an increasingly digital world and prepare our students to thrive there, digital transformation is a growing imperative. To get there, I’m happy to take a lesson from a fish”

The reality is that many of these coming innovations are beneficial. Computers and audiovisual systems in classrooms allow faculty to incorporate rich media and analytic tools into instruction, Learning Management Systems allow faculty to supplement instruction with online content or to deliver classes in their entirety online. Web conferencing facilitates communication and collaboration in ways that would have been difficult even ten years ago. Customer Relationship Management systems give students clearer interaction points with support and advising resources at their schools. Learning analytics tools allow institutions to better understand the individual and collective needs of the people they serve. The examples above are just a few ways technology has become integral to our institutions.

The pace of technological change would have been reason enough to evaluate opportunities, needs and resources thoughtfully. The introduction of Artificial Intelligence is acting as an accelerant for how digital tools impact the university. Beyond the simple addition of a new version of something that we have seen before, Artificial Intelligence is putting new powers into the hands of every individual: powers to increase personalization, to scale activities, to create new works and representative agents, to understand massive data sets and to augment human capacity in significant, previously (and currently!) unimaginable ways. Like any disruptive tool, AI requires us to rethink many assumptions. In the educational space, this includes assumptions about what we want students to know, how we encourage intellectual development, what kinds of projects support their learning and how we assess whether the learning has succeeded. Like any powerful tool, AI also provides avenues for abuse and misuse. Navigating these issues requires attention and strategy. Most importantly, it requires understanding our environmental context including external forces, and a response grounded in institutional goals and mission.

The collective and growing adoption of these technologies in colleges and universities worldwide creates a choice and a challenge for institutions. New opportunities can sometimes feel like a swollen river after a summer monsoon: there is just too much all at once. The turbulent center of that flow is an ad hoc approach where those technologies land wherever they catch within the institution. The stagnant water is far to the side where no innovation is happening and nothing ever moves. The strategic decision is that of the fish: close to the flow but not fighting with it. I see that position in IT parlance as a place where a digital transformation is possible. Digital transformation is not just about digitizing a process.

Instead, true digital transformation involves stakeholders and begins with a holistic look at how to best leverage technology to thoughtfully redesign the institution while keeping humans, education and mission at the center. For institutions to survive in an increasingly digital world and prepare our students to thrive there, digital transformation is a growing imperative. To get there, I’m happy to take a lesson from a fish.