Digital transformation in the education sector

The current COVID-19 health crisis has exposed the organizations that have not advanced in the digital transformation they have seen how the current situation puts the continuity of their business at risk. However, and although this crisis may provide a lever to accelerate the process, it will continue to be of vital strategic importance in the future. Advancing is no longer a future trend or a mechanism to obtain competitive advantages over the competition, but an absolute necessity for the survival of organizations.

The digital transformation implies a comprehensive change in organizations and must be led by Management, promoting a culture of change and the promotion of continuous innovation, always focusing on the customer. This will require:

• The transformation of business models, rethinking products and services for a digital world
• The digitalization of all processes in the value chain of organizations
• Training of the different agents involved in the processes: clients, workers, suppliers, partners, administration.

Focusing on the educational sector, digital transformation does not, therefore, consist of setting up an online store for the sale of courses or setting up a moodle so that students can download content (in many cases in pdf). On the contrary, a deep transformation must be carried out in all the axes mentioned above.

Online education also faces important challenges such as media inequality and consequently of opportunities for students based on their socioeconomic level or inequality in the digital skills of teaching staff.

Although with the peculiarities of each educational institution and its positioning, we can represent its processes in the following way:

This post is the first in a series of 4 articles related to Digital Transformation in the education sector. In the next posts, we will analyze the most relevant aspects in each of the key chain processes highlighted in the previous scheme. You can find them here:

• Market research, design, and planning of the training offer
  In this process, the strategy is defined and the educational model of our organization is designed.
  Read the post "How to design the strategy and education model of our organization?"
   
• Marketing, recruitment, and enrollment
  We will analyze here Marketing, sales, and technology techniques that will allow us to attract students and fill the classrooms.
  Read the post "How to attract students with marketing and technology techniques?"
   
• Teaching and learning
  We will see how the design of the pedagogical model and the quality of the teaching will be key to the success of the organization's digital transformation strategy, as well as technological tools that will help us in this regard.
  Read the post "New pedagogical models in the COVID-19 era"