Abstract:

Senior Education Leaders in higher education settings face many challenges, not the least of which requires managing the provision of increasingly sophisticated digitalized learning experiences in a world where the digital innovation and transformation narratives continue to gain traction. While Learning Management Systems (LMS) and associated content authoring tools have taken root in universities and colleges throughout the world, many administrations continue to trust that they have thus met the challenge of this ‘digital learning meme’. By providing faculty with an LMS, and creating ongoing training and development workshops on the use of this technology, they hope these provisions, in and of themselves, will encourage faculty to move of their accord into the digital narrative space. Characteristically, faculty movement into these highly promoted digital learning spaces follows a similar pattern: First they are assigned a course site and then nudged or directed to transfer a percentage, e.g., 30%, of their content online. Concomitantly, they are also encouraged to adopt what has become known as the ‘Blended Learning’ or ‘The Flipped Classroom’, pedagogy, i.e., students access their learning resources online so as to properly prepare - before class on their own time and target - for subsequent active learning classroom activities. The more adventurous institutions aspire to be on the front line of global innovation and anticipate they are meeting the needs of their digitally savvy students by adopting MOOCs as alternative programme choices. Within this cornucopia of settings and challenges the term ‘digital learning’ gets tossed around like it is some life-saving flotsam on a vast uncharted ocean, while the dream of a fully digitalized undergraduate programme continues to seem like a very remote possibility. Accordingly, based on a successful implementation and using a deductive approach, this paper presents the key aspects necessary for the successful design and deployment of a fully digitalized learning ecosystem. Three essential phases have been identified and four key underpinning factors associated with the successful implementation of each phase are described, along with specific examples that must be in place in order to create and sustain the realization of a fully digitized undergraduate programme.

Keywords:

Digital Innovation, Digital Learning, Online Learning, Systemic Innovation, Digitalization, Strategic Innovation, Blended Learning, Flipped Classroom.