Page 19 - Optus Future of Business Report 2013

18
optus Future of Business
Case Study: Australian National University
Digital Transformation in Education –
ANU in 2020
There is perhaps no single industry
undergoing a bigger transformation
between bricks and mortar and digital
channels than higher education.
Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs)
have allowed people from around the
world to attend lectures at some of the
most prestigious schools and even start
to earn credits towards a degree. Tablets
are replacing textbooks and different
online formats are phasing out the
classroom-centric approach for higher
education, which is reverberating
through to tertiary institutions. As
an industry, IDC’s research shows the
education sector spent approximately
A$2.78 billion on information and
communications technology in 2012 and
this is expected to exceed A$3.1 billion
in 2015. The biggest investment areas in
2012 have been mobility, cloud delivery
models and infrastructure consolidation.
Australian National
University
Based in Canberra, Australian National
University (ANU) is one of the many
universities seeing big changes in
traditional and new channels of
engagement as well as how students
want to be taught. The university has
set far reaching goals and priorities it
wants to achieve by 2020 in a strategy
report known as ANU in 2020. The
role of IT is enabling the 2020 vision
to be realised by setting in place the
right business strategy and deploying
the right types of technologies under
an enterprise architecture and design.
Peter Nikoletatos, CIO of ANU, explains
to IDC, a leading provider of global
ICT research and advice, the changes
he is seeing in the CIO office and how
digital technologies are reshaping
IT and education to enrich students’
experiences.
Digital channels
complement bricks
and mortar
In the view of ANU, digital channels
whether online, social or mobile are not
substitutes for bricks and mortar within
education, but are complementary. The
Optus Future of Business Report 2013
indicates that the use of digital channels
in the education and training sector
is set to increase significantly. In the
next three to five years, all education
organisations surveyed expect to be
using online to engage with customers
while use of the mobile channel is set
to more than double, from 38 percent
today to 81 percent1.
Nikoletatos says there is no
replacement for face-to-face interaction,
the experience of being on a university
campus and learning among peers in
a classroom. “What is changing is the
role of both IT in education and the
role technology is playing in the sector,”
Nikoletatos says. “In the old model, IT
was the holder of technology and it was
limited largely to a department. In the
new world, students have brought their
own technology and want to connect
and reach a wider audience.”
In the new paradigm, IT is now moving
from service delivery to a conduit of
enabling relationships and community
outreach, according to Nikoletatos.
From the university’s perspective,
there are now multiple forms of
communications (for example, video
conferencing, video channels, web
site, social media, e-mail to telephony),
with IT playing a central role in all
interactions.
Supporting remote and distance
learning through online platforms
Whether users are getting information
from the website or signing up for
courses, online is an important new
channel for ANU. Many students tend
to balance a full or part time job while
studying. In order to accommodate this
demand to balance academic life with
jobs, ANU views online more as a video
platform to offer students the flexibility
to enrol in courses remotely and
interact with the material on their own
schedule. The student body also has
options to listen to podcasts, lectures
or interact with online content based
on their schedule. This can be done
through a variety of media formats and
device types. Nikoletatos points out that
every day ANU is teaching somewhere
in the world, except for public holidays.
In 2011, the university’s videos had
more than 780,000 views. Outside of
Australia, this included countries such
as Malaysia (151,000 views), the US
(134,000 views) and Thailand (99,685
views). Being able to show digital
course content to such a wide audience
helps the university to build its brand
and attract students.
With the roll out of the National
Broadband Network (NBN), Nikoletatos
sees additional opportunities for online
to enrich students’ learning and the
teaching experience for staff. “We see
NBN as a platform for new business
models. NBN is an opportunity to close
remoteness when infrastructure is
connecting you (students, staff, and
researchers) to the rest of the world.”
Mobility for user experience and
differentiation
In 2012, IDC reported 9.4 million
smartphones and 3 million tablets
shipped in Australia. Many of these
next-generation devices are making
their way on to university campuses.
Like most universities, ANU is
embracing bring your own devices
and supporting them with wireless
connectivity on campus. Some of the
ways ANU differentiates is putting
more emphasis on being able to deliver
a strong user experience by making
wireless access uniform, transparent
and device agnostic. ANU’s IT strategy,
which is business-outcome focused, is
about “emulating an environment that
reflects how students want to learn and
making every part of the campus a next
generation learning space,” Nikoletatos
says. IDC’s research has found that
achieving this level of outcome requires
understanding about users, application
density and workloads into cells. It
also requires an ability to predict
traffic patterns (users and devices)
through management, and having
strong capabilities around security and
access management.
ANU has also equipped students with
mobile apps, which have advanced
features such as augmented reality.
This can help users to orientate
themselves around campus through
computer animated sensory, sound and
graphics. The goal is to integrate these
capabilities with searchable content
that is most relevant to teachers and
students on campus and make the
experience transformative. While not
a replacement for traditional channels,
digital channels are important for
elevating the user experience to a new
level. This helps to drive differentiation
at ANU from other academic
institutions, making it more attractive
to students, teachers and donors. 1 Optus Future of Business Report 2013 -
results based on 28 survey respondents
from the education and training sectors.
Social media for interaction
and outreach
Most organisations have tended to
struggle with how best to use social
media within their channel mix and
who should own it (e.g. IT, marketing or
line of business). Within education and
at ANU, social media is an important
platform for two-way communications.
As an outbound channel, it is important
for the university to communicate
with its student body, faculty and
staff. As an inbound channel, it is
used to gather feedback, understand
sentiment, as well as to pinpoint and
resolve issues. ANU plans to continue
using social media as an important
two-way communications platform,
and to support its community
outreach in the future.
Role of IT in channel
integration
Integrating traditional and new
channels is a big challenge for
organisations. ANU’s approach to
support a multi-vendor channel
environment has been around asset
and inventory management and
building it into a technical reference
architecture that will enable the goals
the business wants to achieve. For
example, while video to the desktop
applications are in high demand, ANU
will look at ways over the top apps can
be supported in the existing standard
operating environment.
Key to channel integration is the choice
of supplier. Similar to many universities,
ANU deals with multiple suppliers at
all levels of the ICT chain. However, it
differentiates by focusing on vendors
that have roadmaps to fit its IT services
strategy. It is also important that
vendors understand its business and
are willing to base a relationship on a
partnership of risk and reward for both
parties. Global reach is important for
bringing in what has worked outside
Australia for another customer in
a similar scenario. Differentiating
services is also an important
criterion for showing value.