The Student Experience Focus

“The hardest thing about the road not taken is that you never know where it might have led.”  -Lisa Wingate,  A Month of Summer

My mission began in 2010. I set out to become a catalyst for innovation in Higher Education. It's been the most rewarding professional journey I've ever taken. At the time, my wife was in her second year of medical school and I became enamored with her education process and the technology at her disposal. As I tuned in, I became fascinated with the overall student experience.  

We sat at dinners with her peers and colleagues and heard these medical students exclaim their frustration in how the administration wasn't "listening" and taking the student feedback into consideration. At the very least, the students agreed that the administration seemed "out of touch" with reality when it came to testing, student schedules, facilities, timelines, course materials, curriculum, clinical demands and more.  

About 6 years later, having served in the Higher Education industry in various ways and roles, I took time to reflect on my many trips to campuses across the nation. As I became more entrenched and aware of the challenges facing Higher Education, I knew there was an important and unmet need being given more institutional attention.

The value of a college education has come under fire in the last few years. As more alternative channels for post-secondary and technical training emerge, there are some challenges to the value proposition of a traditional college education. Despite competitive forces, which have proven formidable, these alternatives aren't affecting the quality of the educational experience being delivered or the value of a degree at these honored institutions.

"The university throve, as it were, on ignorance. Or, if this way of stating it seems unnecessarily paradoxical, the university throve on the patterned isolation of its component parts, and this isolation required that people continually talk past each other, failing to listen to what others were actually saying. This lack of comprehension, which safeguards one’s privacy and one’s illusions, doubtless occurs in many groups, but it may be of special importance in explaining the otherwise unfathomable behavior of a society’s most intelligent members."-Larry Veysey,  The Emergence of the American University (1965)

Many things haven't changed in Higher Education in over a hundred years. Many institutions recognize the need to become more agile and be more closely informed with the pulse and attitudes of their constituents. Given that, most agree that technology is necessary to realize that vision.

The questions loom... How can we, as a Higher Education community, better recruit the right students, engage them with relevant insights, evaluate and consider their digital and expressive "likes" and communicate in a way that creates a deeply personal experience? In short, how can we improve the customer experience?

Then, how can we evolve and leverage the bevvy of information this dynamic engagement model produces to better serve the diverse constituents we serve?  How can we continue to engage with students throughout their post-academic life in a way that pulls them back in as active, contributing members of the alumni community? Long term, how do we continue to be the sought after source of lifelong learning?

It comes down to communication and data...which it turns out is a very fluid, dynamic, always evolving, socially driven thing in 2015.

That need emerges from creating a better student experience and is partly solved by embracing purpose-built applications - from recruiting through admissions, as a student and along the alumni spectrum after college, creating a single view of the student is an essential business imperative. The other half of the equation is to have the right people, operating model, executive support and infrastructure to embolden your teams to embrace technology to reach higher.

Institutions today face an opportunity to create a truly personalized experience and that need has been exemplified due to the diversity of the student population. Increasingly, the voice, behavior and content that is sustained throughout the student life-cycle is now accessible and relevant to helping create a more meaningful dialogue with constituents. Using data and the right holistic view of the student, Institutions face an opportunity to better serve their constituents and deepen the levels of engagement and trust. In a service-based economy, there's very few things more important.  

In my experience, the great University and College leaders embrace two specific ideals...

Ideal 1:  We must evolve and embrace transformational change to serve the student and the community

Ideal 2:  Technology provides significant value to help deliver value throughout the continuum of a student life-cycle

There's an urgent set of challenges facing Higher Education today and it requires a mindset of evolution and a culture of innovation.

That is why I joined Oracle. The organization is making strategic investments to help College Leadership better serve their constituents. Empowering College Leaders to listen more actively and recruit, enroll, service, and engage students through more accessible, student-centered, agile, multi-channel and mobile-first programs.

Having seen and experienced most ed tech in the space, I believe that The Student Cloud from Oracle is the most ambitious and comprehensive suite of software and communication tools to ever break into Higher Education. 

Education is much more than the sum of it's parts, much more than the bestowment of a degree. Ask a graduating student today about their favorite and most meaningful experience and most won't cite examples of things they learned inside the classroom, instead recalling the social experiences that shaped them into adults and prepared them for the workforce.

Higher Education is about producing a successful journey for a student to realize their own potential and emboldening students to pave pathways towards a promising future. Success is not only signed by the President and framed on the mantle. Success is often defined by an individual and measured by the perceptions of the entire experience. Oracle is in the business of creating a better student experience with and for our Higher Education partners. I believe in the value of the college experience and we're going to help make it even better. I am honored to have them in my bag and travel from NYC to Florida to help institutions learn about the value the Student Cloud can bring to their hallowed grounds.  

James Dobbs is passionate about helping Colleges and Universities thrive in a changing world by aligning strategy, building consensus, embracing technology and executing change initiatives.  He currently serves as the Application Sales Manager at Oracle from NYC to Florida for the suite of Constituent Experience cloud software purpose-built for Higher Education. He can be reached at 443-900-6961 or [email protected]