Threading Toward a Digital, Integrated Student Experience

Juan Villamil, Chief Information Officer, at Imperial College Business School

Juan Villamil, Chief Information Officer, at Imperial College Business School

What are some digital learning tools that are poised to become mainstream in the evolving education sector?

I’m the CIO at Imperial College, responsible for procuring technology and other learning toolsfor myeducational institutionto support its needs. After the pandemic, we are striving to deliver 80 percent of our education on campus, so our technologies are evolving with the learning needs of our students. We’re using all the latest technologies around visual content, lecture capture, document and knowledge sharing, and collaboration.

We’re experimenting with a mix of different immersive technologies like augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) to improve the education experience—as a part of our non-compromised approach to impart education. For making that possible, all our technologies must alsointegrate smoothlyto ensure a seamless experience, either in a regular classroom or in a hybrid-flex classroom.

We have developed a program called the student digital experience, which takes our students on a digital journey on the Imperial College campus. The program solely aims to provide an integrated digital experience to all our students throughout their journey.

Despite recession rumors, the European edtech sector received 40 percent more funding than last year. What would the extra funding bring to the education sector in the UK or Europe regarding technology?

There has been a significant increase in the edtech sector, and one of the main factors is online learning, accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Online learning and teaching have been the catalyst in securing that additional funding, allowing edtech companies to expand their products and services, and educational institutions trying to bring in new experiences for their students.

We operate in and have students from 132 countries,and not all the students are on the same technology level even though they are attending the same course. Because of this, the content has to be adapted to suit all the student’s needsby investing in technology that provides precision education. We need to deliver tailored content through the student journey to the point where we foresee even more advanced technologies that aid in oureducation delivery. For instance, we assume, technological advancements like an AI tutor can help provide better education while retaining the human touch of delivering education to students.

What technologies are you implementing to make sure that student and administrative data is protected?

Security takes many forms and aspects in our digital infrastructure. We have toprotect the personal data of students, teaching content, and assessments. We must also ensure that the students do not cheat the system to gain the qualification they didn’t work for.

We have implementedmany technologies that work together to secure our digital infrastructure. Since joining Imperial College, I have worked on moving all the IT systems to a risk-based model where we approach security holistically and consider the risks at each step.

What technology partnerships do you use to boost your security?

We have a plethora of cybersecurity technologies to handle all cybersecurity threats, from monitoring to malware protection, mutation detection, and tools to manage phishing. Since we do a lot of research and have a lot of data, we are a very attractive target for cybercriminals. We must keep our 8,500 colleagues across our nine campuses and 20,000 students from 132 countries safe by implementing all kinds of cybersecurity technology.

When a student journey starts, we onboard the studentsusing Microsoft tools. We work with other technologies and tools to make sure that we can verify, validate, and understand the students.

From the identity and access management perspective, we give the students a college identity, which helps us manage and control access to all the systems and applications. In that context, we have made a lot of improvements to our infrastructure and security in the last two and half years. Once a student gets their identity, they will be able to get access to all the resources, whether online or offline. To be able to provide this, we partner with Scaler, an edtech platform, to deliver a zero-trust infrastructure and role-based access.

We also have tracking tools formonitoring a student’s progress and seeing how they are doing in their time at the university, while still maintaining the privacy and identity of the students. We have a massive capability around analytics, where we take all the data to make informed decisions around trends and patterns, called the unified data platform.

How did the experience of working in the government and corporate sectors help to build a better educational experience for Imperial?

I was British Telecom’s CTO before joining Imperial,soI have a technical background. As a former CTO, I have hands-on experience in defining and delivering technologies as opposed to just working as a business executive. My time as the CTO prepared me to be able to work with the most incredible range of technologies and systems.

What advice do you have for other players looking to make it big in the education sector?

My first advice would be to focus on one problem at a time and try to solve that problem really well. Be very clear about the value you’re going to add to the organization. Be well-informed about the market andyour organization, and be incredibly persistent and resilient while solving the problem. You have to be prepared to adapt to your surroundings.

Another piece of advice is to surround yourself with people who are better than you. When I look at my team, I see people who are better than me, and it is really important to recognize your team for who they are as well as your own weaknesses and strengths. One of my strengths is being able to build and surround myself with a fantastic team who knows what they are doing, which is important for the development of a company. We have to learn to open ourhearts and mind to better ideas and learning because that is going to help a person grow.

My last advice is to be passionate, dedicated, willing to put in the hard work and chase the positives to be successful. By pursuing and focusing more on the positives, you will learn to tune out the naysayers around you.