The Changing Education Technology Landscape in the Post-Covid Era

Laura Dawson, CIO, London School of Economics & Political Science

Laura Dawson, CIO, London School of Economics & Political Science

Could you talk aboutyour experience as a CIO? How would you say, has the education tech space evolved over the years and what are some of the advantages of the current technological revolution?

I believe that the education technology space was progressing at a slower pace in the past. But, the pandemic has resulted in growing awareness of the digital marketplaces and the need for technology in supporting the work of the university. If we do not capitalise on this now and return to purely our face-to-face and on-premise services, there is a risk that we will be left behind.

What are some of the advantages that you have been able to leverage with the advent of the latest technological revolution you are witnessing in the education in tech space? How has technology helped you to effectively mitigate the challenges that are prevailing in the education tech landscape when it comes to delivery of knowledge?

I don't think we are pioneering or cutting-edge in our use of technology, but I believe the kind of online collaborative tools that previously existed have been game changing.One of the major cornerstones of our strategy was about making space for collaboration. We plannedto devote a significant amount of energy to getting people to understand, see the value of and use collaborative technologies, including familiarisation, training, advocacy, and evangelism. Because of the pandemic we did all of that in about 4 days.

Because we had those tools we were able to transition from a hundred percent face-to-face setup to a hundred percent online establishment in a matter of days.All organisations can benefit from ubiquitous data, unlimited connectivity, and having access to these allows us to understand, communicate and interact with our students much more easily. The fact that our students can be in China, India, or America and still have access to the same content as if they were in London is the most significant factor that has aided us.

On the other hand,cybercrime is the most significant threat in the education technology landscape, especially in higher education. That ubiquity of data, connectivity and compute that are such an advantage are also the doorways in for any threat actor.

Universities have been badly hit by cybercrime either held to ransom or because of the knowledge and intelligence the university might hold. It helps no one if an organisation pays the ransom and sadly that has happened across sectors. All that does is increase the ROI for the cyber criminals making it ever more lucrative. Cyber Security is our number one challenge, and the answer to that has to be continuous investment in your cyber security capabilities – both people and technology.

What makes many organisations vulnerable is deprioritising the maintenance effort or not ensuring that it is being done. It is no longer a choice leaving systems to go out of support and building up a significant legacy of old technology is increasing all the ways a cyber criminal can gain access. We are seeing a significant shift from phishing attempts as a means of egress to brute force attack and seeking to exploit system vulnerability – so keeping on top of maintenance is a must and making that argument to the CFO cannot be put off. Sharing stories and making sure your leadership are out there, hearing from other organisations about what is happening is a must.

I would like to talk about the experience you have brought into this space in helping the London School of Economics and Political Science stay ahead of the game when it comes to having top-notch security for its students and educators when they are online, and given the fact that the COVID-19 pandemic has pushed it forward, where most students are not in the classrooms, but in the comfort of their homes, it's a great outreach approach thatyou have taken. Could you talk more about it?

Yes, we mustn’t be complacent when it comes to cybersecurity. There are many things we could be doing better, and we are constantly analysing and improving.The university has a culture in which debate and discourse are central to what people do.

We are starting to see the impact of modern technology approaches on education for example use of CRM; This helps us to get a richer picture of our students where before information may be siloed to the Academic Department the student was in. That helps us to see how the student is engaging with us, whether there are any early signs of problems or issues the student may be experiencing and that allows us to more quickly intervene.

However, the pandemic has created challenges particularly for ensuring that students who are unable to get to Campus have as good an experience as possible, remotely. We have a principle of ‘no detriment’ which means making sure that we have taken every possible step to give the remote students the same academic standard of education as those that are face to face.

To help us with that we already had lecture recording and that has made a big difference. Since the pandemic, it's switched to being 100 percent, with all of our lectures and classes being recorded, and it has become the norm.

The last shift is to move from software that was developed in house, maybe by other universities, to more standard platform-basedsolutions such as CRM or ERP solutions. That is a beneficial move, in my opinion, since it will lead to much more ubiquitous and controlled systems and standardisation of our platforms. It will also make universities more attractive as customers, which for many years has not really been the case

Is there any advice you'd give to industry veterans or emerging entrepreneurs in the education tech space about certain practices they can consider when it comes to leveraging these technologies?

We need to recognise that we are not alone in the higher education space. According to research conducted by a U.S. university last year on how far along firms are in their digital journey, roughly 70 to 72 percent of long-standing organisations are still in the initial stages of their digital transformation journey.But my first piece of advice would be, don't think you can do it all by tomorrow.

Another factor is to clarify what we mean when we say "digital." There are two things that people need to think about while considering the idea to go digital. One is, what's the state of your core operation at the moment in terms of digitising? If there are lots of local solutions, lashed together by point to point integrations or manual handovers then you have a job to do to digitise these. Whilst you can deliver new services, using digital technologies, if you back end processes are still a bit of spaghetti, then you aren’t going to be efficient. Many CIOs would argue that tackling this is ‘table stakes’ for digital transformation. The second part of going digital is then using digital tools to deliver the new services your customers need and this can be bringing in more skills like design thinking, UX and Product Management.

Is there anything else that you would like to share that could add value to this article?

I would just like to reiterate what I have said throughout, which is you are not alone, and probably the most important piece of advice I can give to anyone in the higher education sector is to expand their network, speak to people, and not confine themselves to talking to people in their own industry. They should go out there and talk to people in other industries because you never know where that spark of inspiration will come from.