Is education's digital transformation falling behind?

Digital transformation is driven by a need to connect the dots between people and information.?

When geographical proximity isn’t possible, digital devices can allow people to coalesce and collaborate. We’ve seen this to be especially important throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.?

In the education sector, the responses to the pandemic in education differed between countries - not something that was unexpected, but something that I think emphasized the differences in digital transformation in education across different countries.

For some, there was a need to equip students with devices. In others, connectivity infrastructure had to be expanded and hacks were needed to manage the volume of students located somewhere other than the school building.

While it's not the same story around the whole of APAC, all countries have much to gain from accelerating the adoption of digital-first principles in education.?

I’ve seen first-hand how digital transformation can help teachers deliver more interactive lessons so students are better able to retain information. When students can better retain information, they’re more equipped to think critically as well as meaningfully contribute to society.?

A three-part manifesto for digital transformation in education

In my view, three things are required for successful education IT ecosystems:

• connectivity
• policy
• budget.

You need sufficient infrastructure to execute a reliable wireless connection, a sound policy to guide IT implementation efforts and a budget to ensure resources are available to make it happen. Bridging the gaps as they appear in these three areas will help bring education up to speed in the arena of digital transformation.?

Connectivity builds bridges?

Digital transformation goes beyond the mere distribution of devices to students. It’s about enabling people to understand and harness the power of technology in what they do.?

In my view, COVID-19 restrictions helped expose the need for further digital transformation. With students and teachers being forced to do their work from home, there was added strain on network operators.

The transition from people operating on a centralized on-site network to being dispersed throughout their individual home networks also compromised bandwidth capacity.? According to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), some operators experienced up to a 60% increase in internet traffic compared to pre-pandemic network loads.

Although we’ve needed to facilitate home-based learning throughout the pandemic, I don’t think home-based learning is the ideal state long-term. I believe the utopian goal for digital transformation in education is to introduce an IT ecosystem where students, teachers and parents can better use and access information.?

Most schools throughout the APAC region recognize the importance of technology in education. The challenge, as far as I’ve observed, is for people to fully understand how technology can be leveraged to do more for students and teachers - as well as parents who want to gain greater visibility of their child’s academic performance.?

The problem with traditional educational models is the emphasis on passive teaching. In many educational domains, teachers talk in front of students, reading directly from textbooks and handbooks. This doesn’t inspire students to actively contribute, and their learning opportunities are thus hindered.?

With educational technology, students can directly participate with interactive programs, navigate videos and browse the web for the most up-to-date resources. By encouraging interactive learning, educational technology promotes activity-based-learning (ABL). ABL has been found to be vital in fostering improved retention as well as motivation to pursue further learning.?

However, I’d like to stress that connectivity and technology in and of itself can’t drive effective teaching and learning. There needs to be a strategy in place to ensure technology is properly integrated into course material. Students also need to be taught how to find credible resources and provide correct attribution when they use them.?

Enabling people to understand and harness the power of technology in education helps improve learning and teaching outcomes.?

Policy dictates, budget enables

Even when connectivity is good, you can’t drive education to the digital age without a clear education policy and a well-defined budget. Research has shown that countries who implement “digital first” at the top end of policy-making experience greater progress in education and technological sectors. Once it’s in place at the top, it can then filter into branches of government where education is part of the overarching digital-first strategy.?

This, in my view, has been one of the key reasons why digital transformation in education has lagged. Up until the outbreak of COVID-19, there hadn’t been enough sound policy implementation to successfully drive digital transformation.?

I’m curious as to why that is. Why did it take a global pandemic to drive the fast adoption of a digital transformation policy???

Perhaps the present way of doing things appeared to be performing reasonably well - and no one wanted to do too much that would change or potentially jeopardize it. Yet, some countries were still able to react quickly, and it’s interesting that, from my observations, those with a well-defined policy were indeed able to react quickly when the pandemic hit.

As an example, Singapore is well known for its education system, especially regarding the K-12 area. Singapore, along with South Korea, Taiwan and Japan have been at or near the top of international leagues tables that assess children’s ability in reading, maths and science for over a decade.?

When COVID-19 hit, the Singapore Ministry of Education was able to accelerate its Personal Learning Device (PLD) program to equip students with devices to enable home-based learning (HBL) - made possible with policy and budget prioritized for execution.?While there were complications because of this accelerated action, it was still able to take a lead in building and delivering an emergency purchase budget for the purpose of giving each student a device, enabling them to learn from home.

I think this was one of the very few positive outcomes of the global crisis and that, because of this, countries now have sufficient reason and opportunity to unlock greater growth in education through digital-first policies. They can certainly compare their situations with other countries, and learn from those experiences.

Unfortunately, these types of policy pivots still don’t mean everyone has equal opportunity to harness digital transformation. Access to the required resources largely stems from inequalities between and within countries. Technologically disadvantaged groups in each country have been found to experience the greatest lags in educational outcomes.?

A 2020 research study from the University of Virginia found a positive relationship between district-level household access to electricity and maths results within countries. I think this finding alone stands to reason why digital transformation should be an ongoing priority in educational development.?

We, as a global society, need to bring digital transformation up to speed to advance the quality of knowledge, learning and growth for everyone.?