Digital Transformation – Employee Pushback

DigiTech

Roshini Kumar

Stakeholders of education who get impacted first during the Digital Transformation in Education are the staff members of the school. They could be the Teachers or the Admin Staff. While carving out the strategy for Digital Transformation in Education, we need to be mindful of their fears, apprehensions, aspiration and expectations. The staff should be made comfortable during this transition period and every step should be explained before it is put into practice.

Digital Transformation should have a purpose and the end goals should be defined. Every stakeholder should be given a responsibility, achievement should be measured. Staff must be informed and counseled on how technology would enhance their efficiency and will assist in teaching-learning process. Every staff member should be trained and certified in every phase of Digital Transformation to build confidence and standardization.

Digital Transformation – Design Objectives & Desired Scenarios

Professional Development

• Through the development of course material, teachers need to make good use of basic tools like word processing, spreadsheets, scheduling, presentations, etc.
• Some teachers need to instruct in information technology where some levels of certification are required;
• Careerdevelopment programs for teachers

Learning Processes

• Guided access to resources: individualized, self-directed learning, online learning, and mobile services
• Tools for teaching with immediate, ongoing assessment; streamline administrative tasks resulting in more time to spend teaching
• Facilitate more personalized, relevant, and efficient learning, allowing more time to target students’ preferred learning styles and unique areas of interest
• Use real-time feedback and assessment to identify students’ problem areas in time to motivate and correct

Commerce

• Online fees payment
• Onlineshopping (uniforms, books, and stationery)

Digital Transformation – Building Blocks

School Data Interoperability

• Student registration process; share data from agencies and other schools
• Data sharing between administration systems
• Minimize administrative time while maximizing teaching and research time
• Online incident reporting to police and justice departments
• Communicate directly, rapidly, and more frequently with stakeholders

Technology Standards

• Schools need a flexible infrastructure that fits their unique needs
• Infrastructure based on open technology standards such as XML and Web-based services communicating over the HTTP protocol
• Loosely coupled systems to function as one
• Mission-critical information housed in secure data centers which are centrally supported, and various services are provided through application service providers according to service level agreement

Communication & Collaboration

• Parent/teacher online discussion on student outcomes/progress
• Student/teacher online discussion with tutors and experts on focused areas of course material
• Student-to-studentcollaborations and chat on projects
• Parent access to student and school schedules, calendars, and current scores
• Students can communicate and collaborate easily using presence-aware technology to brainstorm and aggregate ideas
• Increased collaboration and sharing best practices across school campus and between schools over wide geographic boundaries

Content Management

• Students can gather relevant learning resources effortlessly for analysis and presentation when, where, and how they prefer—at home, school, or play
• Teachers can spend less time preparing information for rich, dynamic display and more time learning
• Teachers can explore alternative technology-enabled pedagogies encouraging student-facilitated discovery and collaborative mentoring

School Business Intelligence Services

• Administrators can generate reports on various aspects of students, teachers, and school performance
• Oversight groups can have the necessary information to make informed decisions
• Information made available to various parties including teachers, students, parents, and administrators – making it easy to identify issues, take actions, and then measure the impact of those actions

The Connected Teacher

The connected teacher is the conductor of the Connected Learning Community. Their personal teaching and learning space is also accessible from a multitude of devices including Web browsers and “thin client” edge devices for nomadic use, with the richest experience occurring with their portable, intelligent, teaching and learning device.

The connected teacher is connected to:

• Their peers

• At other schools in their region
• At other schools in their state
• Around the world

• Their students

• Through rich, timely data
• Throughinformation about their performance
• Throughthe students learning portfolio
• Throughreal-time communication (either face to face or online)
• Throughasynchronous communications

• Their students’ families

• By easily providing families information about

i.  Student activities

ii. Student performance

ii. Scool activities

• By being more accessible through online/virtual meetings and conferences
• By being able to communicate directly with the family

Grading

Like the connected student, the connected teacher’s space benefits from the same underlying resources in the services fabric. For example, their student record book is connected through the school data interoperability fabric to the student information system making end-of-term grade reporting a simple process. That same student record book is tied to the performance monitoring infrastructure, so that in analyzing an individual student’s performance, granular assignment-level data can be used.

– Keeping Multiple Parties Informed

Teachers also benefit from the shared calendaring system. They know that when they create an assignment in the learning management system, it will automatically be visible on their own and on each student’s calendar. Any changes to the assignment are reflected immediately in each individual’s assignment list. Furthermore, arranging parent-teacher conferences to discuss a particular student’s progress is facilitated by parents being able to see available times for the teacher and vice versa. By making their presence status available to parents or students, teachers can host online office hours or teacher conferences to assure that all stakeholders are guaranteed access.

– Curriculum Planning and Preparation

The connected teacher also uses powerful learning and curriculum management tools to manage classroom and online instruction, enabling them to easily tailor instruction to the special needs of a particular student and more easily track their progress through the performance management infrastructure. To facilitate their teaching activities, teachers have access to a rich library of digital curriculum objects, each correlated with particular educational objectives and curriculum standards. Using standard taxonomy and meta-data to describe these learning objects makes it easy to reuse these learning objects in different ways and in any compliant learning management or performance management system. The ability of teachers to rate the quality of these learning objects, report on their own applications, and report on the results of using these learning objects, combined with the rich communication and collaboration capabilities in the Connected Learning Community services fabric, enables the creation of rich “communities of practice” centered around the teaching context. This facilitates a seamless interweaving of professional development into everyday teaching activities.

Connected Administrator

The connected administrator is the CEO in the connected learning community. The connected administrator rests well at night knowing that their teachers do not have to waste valuable time doing administrative or clerical tasks and can focus on their teaching and furthering their own learning through sustained professional development activities. They are confident that quality teachers want to teach at their school, thereby eliminating the challenges of attracting and retaining quality faculty.

The connected administrator is connected to:

• The community

• Easily addressing the community through the Web
• Soliciting community input through the Web, e-mail, phones, surveys, apps etc.
• By enabling the community to know about important meetings through a shared community calendar
• Making meetings open to people independent of location

• Their staff

• Through improved performance monitoring systems
• Through the ability to address and solicit feedback from teachers through the web, e-mail, phones, surveys, etc. without taking away from valuable face-to-face time with students and parents

• Their peers

• By sharing best practices
• Being able to discuss common issues (and resolutions)
• Have access to a peer mentor

• Government Agencies

• By more easily sharing data directly with oversight groups
• Having access to legitimate performance information
• Being able to more easily manage their budgets and school resources

– Staying In-Tune and Communicating with Constituencies

The connected administrator can easily keep a finger on the pulse of learning in their schools. The connected administrator can, with a few mouse clicks, schedule an online community meeting or allow the wider community to experience an open address or other more formal occasions. By using an inexpensive video camera attached to an ordinary computer, and leveraging the rich communications and collaboration service fabric, the administrator can make it available online or on-demand to keep community stakeholders informed and engaged with the schools.

– Keeping A Pulse on Key Developments and Overall Learning Progress

Administrators can ask the system to inform them proactively through the notifications infrastructure if certain conditions arise, thereby enabling them to take action before circumstances get out of hand.

The business intelligence component of the foundation services provides administrators with up-to-date information about how students are progressing in their school. They have the ability to generate their own reports on particular items of interest without having to rely on a database administrator or systems programmer.

While embarking on the journey of Digital Transformation institutions should realize that the empowerment of staff and making them “Future Ready” should be the only strategy. Teachers are Nation Builders; they cannot be replaced by technology, which can enhance their skill. Empowering teachers to confidently and positively embrace change is usually an institution’s top concern. When teachers are given the attention, development and support to become leaders, outcomes improve across the board. Students do better. Schools improve their standings. And teachers can enjoy progression and esteem in a difficult job that deserves more respect.

Write to me at iareview2019@gmail.com regarding your concerns while planning for Digital Transformation and Employee Pushback. I will get expert opinions to address your concerns. The only asset in the knowledge industry is the staff, it is important to look after them during the transition period.

Aditi Bhaduri

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