The Pulse of Higher Ed

By Vickie S. Cook, Ph.D.

Technology may be the most visible element of a digital learning enterprise. It is also one of the easiest to misunderstand. Institutions invest considerable resources in learning management systems, student information systems, customer relationship management platforms, analytics, communication tools, instructional technologies, cybersecurity, and an expanding array of emerging technologies. Each promises opportunities to improve some aspect of institutional operations, teaching, learning, or learner support. Many of you may find that this thought reflects your own experiences; the presence of sophisticated technology does not, by itself, create an excellent digital learning enterprise.

The Technology Hallmark within the updated UPCEA Hallmarks of Excellence in Digital Learning Enterprises intentionally takes a broader view. Technology is not simply infrastructure to be purchased and maintained. It is part of an institutional ecosystem that must connect strategy, people, processes, data, teaching, learning, and learner support. Institutions will continue to encounter new technologies. The pace of change is unlikely to slow and quite likely to increase. The more important question is whether institutions have developed the capacity to make thoughtful choices about which technologies advance their mission and how those technologies work together.

Technology with Institutional Purpose

Higher education has never lacked technology solutions. What institutions sometimes lack is a shared understanding of the problem they are trying to solve. A CIO I worked with for many years always asked, “What problem are you trying to solve?” before considering a technology purchase. A new platform may offer capabilities that appear valuable. An existing vendor may introduce new functionality. Faculty or staff may discover a tool that improves an individual process. Emerging technologies, including artificial intelligence, continually introduce possibilities that institutions could not have anticipated even a few years earlier.

The Technology Hallmark asks institutions to look beyond individual tools and consider the larger digital ecosystem. Systems must be reliable and secure. Data must move appropriately between platforms. Accessibility must be considered from the beginning rather than addressed after implementation. Learners and instructors need timely technical support and appropriate training. Technology investments also need to be financially and environmentally sustainable. 

Academic affairs may focus on teaching and learning. Information technology may emphasize infrastructure, security, integration, and support. Procurement and legal counsel bring additional considerations. Enrollment management, learner support, institutional research, finance, and other units interact with many of the same systems and data. The challenge is not simply coordinating those interests. It is ensuring that technology decisions ultimately serve institutional purpose across campus units and divisions.

Building an Ecosystem Rather Than a Collection of Tools

Over time, institutions can accumulate technology one decision at a time. Each decision may have been reasonable when it was made. Collectively, however, the result can become a complicated digital environment with overlapping functionality, disconnected data, uneven adoption, multiple vendor relationships, and systems that do not always work together as effectively as intended. Sometimes, institutions purchase the same types of solutions from competing vendors that increase the overall cost of a product and decrease integration of data.

Students, faculty, and staff experience the consequences. They may move between systems that require different logins or repeat information the institution already possesses. Faculty may have access to tools they do not fully understand or rarely use and may not even be aware of other technologies already available on their campus. Staff may create workarounds because systems do not communicate effectively. Institutions may continue paying for capabilities that duplicate other investments.

A mature digital learning enterprise periodically steps back from individual technologies and examines the ecosystem as a whole. How well do our systems work together? Where are learners or instructors encountering unnecessary barriers? What technology are we paying for but not fully using? Where does information fail to move when it should? Are our technology investments improving the experiences and outcomes they were intended to support? Are newer, more cost-effective solutions available? Those questions move the conversation from technology acquisition to technology stewardship.

Putting the Hallmark into Practice

The Technology Hallmark reflects the complexity of managing a digital environment that must be dependable today while remaining adaptable for tomorrow. That requires institutional governance. It also requires a willingness to continuously review assumptions about what the institution needs. Interoperability and security are examples of areas that should be reviewed regularly. The Hallmark emphasizes the importance of connecting systems and using data standards so that LMS, SIS, CRM, analytics, and other platforms can contribute to a more complete understanding of learners while maintaining appropriate security and privacy. Increasingly, institutional data must also interact with a larger learning and employment ecosystem beyond the university itself.

Accessibility provides another example. It cannot be treated as a final compliance review after a technology has already been selected. The Hallmark positions accessibility as a consideration within procurement and contract renewal, alongside security, privacy, functionality, and institutional need. 

The same thinking applies to emerging technologies. Artificial intelligence will certainly influence the digital learning ecosystem, but AI is one example of a much larger institutional challenge: technologies will continue to change. Institutions need governance and decision-making processes capable of evaluating new opportunities without allowing the newest tool to determine institutional direction. The goal of this Hallmark is not to predict every technology that comes next. It is to build an institution capable of responding thoughtfully when it arrives.

Measuring What Matters

The breadth of the Technology Hallmark is particularly visible in its Key Performance Indicators. The measures begin with strategy and institutional responsibility: an enterprise-wide digital technology strategy aligned with mission, current governance documents, ongoing security training and assessment, accessibility audits, technology optimization, and standards for interoperability and integration. 

But the KPIs do not stop with technology governance. They also examine system reliability and performance, user adoption, technical support responsiveness, infrastructure capacity, vendor performance, integration stability, instructor and learner satisfaction, enrollment effectiveness, faculty readiness, course and program development timelines, and the relationship between technology use and learner outcomes. Institutions are also encouraged to map their learning technology environment and identify gaps that affect the experience of students, faculty, and staff.  An institution could have excellent system uptime and still have a technology ecosystem that frustrates learners. It could purchase sophisticated tools that faculty and staff rarely use. Systems might operate exactly as designed while failing to share the information necessary to support timely learner interventions.

The KPIs invite institutions to consider technology performance from several perspectives at once: Is it reliable? Is it secure? Is it accessible? Is it being used? Does it integrate? Is it sustainable? And, ultimately, is it helping the institution achieve the outcomes for which the technology was acquired?  This final question may be the most important consideration for future technology planning and institutional decision-making.

Leadership Reflection

If your institution stopped evaluating technology by the capabilities of individual systems and instead examined the digital experience as a whole, what would you discover? Which technologies clearly advance institutional purpose and learner success, and where has the technology itself become the focus rather than the outcome it was intended to support?

Technology will continue to change. Platforms will be replaced, new capabilities will emerge, and institutions will face opportunities that were not anticipated when these Hallmarks were written. The enduring responsibility is not to choose every technology correctly. It is to create the institutional capacity to evaluate, integrate, support, and continually improve technology in service to mission and learners.

Bringing the Series Together

Across this series, we have considered four different dimensions of the Hallmarks of Excellence in Digital Learning Enterprises: integrating digital learning into institutional strategy, intentionally designing the conditions for learner success, extending institutional impact through external engagement, and building technology ecosystems that support institutional purpose.

Each Hallmark addresses a different part of the digital learning enterprise. Yet a common idea runs through all of them. Excellence is intentional.

It is reflected in how institutions align people and priorities, how they design experiences that support learners, how they listen and contribute beyond their institutional boundaries, and how they make choices about technologies that will continue to change.

Each Hallmark addresses a different part of the digital learning enterprise. Excellence is attainable. The Hallmarks provide benchmarks institutions can use to examine that work. They also provide a starting point for deeper conversations about what excellence means within different institutional missions, contexts, and communities.

Our final Hallmarks webinar will provide an opportunity to hear directly from the authors who wrestled with the complexity of the Technology Hallmark and how institutions can prepare for a digital environment that will inevitably continue to evolve. While this concludes our four-part blog series, the conversations surrounding the Hallmarks and what excellence means for digital learning enterprises will continue.

The Hallmarks describe what excellent digital learning enterprises look like. Leadership determines whether institutions become one.

Vickie Cook is a nationally recognized higher education leader specializing in enrollment strategy, online and digital learning, organizational transformation, team development, and leadership growth. She currently serves as a Senior Fellow and Strategic Advisor for UPCEA, and is a Contributing Editor for the Hallmarks of Excellence in Digital Learning Enterprises.