Abstract:

When digitalizing education, having a new information system is not enough. As always in the digital transformation, also the tasks, practices, rules and process must be changed. The problem is that rather often the technology point of view is stressed and pedagogical management and organizational change is neglected [1]. However, especially in developing economies, to make successful and sustainable education digital transformation, not even having technological, pedagogical and organizational change is not enough. There have to be supporting organizations taking care of implemented solutions and further develop them whenever is needed.

In developing economies, there are examples of successful education digitalization projects where new information systems have been taken into use, and the schools have changed their organization and pedagogical approaches. However, after the funding of the development project have ended, no one is left to support and maintain the systems. Over time, when problems occur, the system gradually deteriorates out of order. In the worst case, classrooms full of computers are abandoned although the teachers have found the system useful.

As a solution, we propose an alternative approach to make sustainable and persistent digital transformation in education. We consider it important to take care not only information system development (or acquisition) and change of the pedagogy and organization, but also the ecosystem supporting the change. The education ecosystem must include organizations getting financial benefits (profits) from taking care of the digitalization operations implemented, but also from supporting further development of education digitalization.

Building a completely new ecosystem is challenging, and in our proposition several approaches are used to accomplish only the most critical objectives with minimal effort. Firstly, it must be understood the steps of education digitalization, not everything is needed at once. In the very beginning, when schools are taking their first steps with education digitalization, there is limited amount of need for expertise and skills. Secondly, supporting organizations do not have to start from the scratch. Although there might not be any companies already supporting education digitalization, there might be organizations having enough knowledge to do that. Those organizations should be persuaded to test new business models. Thirdly, there are several ways to support local startups and encourage them to find business in the education sector, and here the experiences from other countries can be applied.

In the Eduditra project, we have done co-operation with two education organizations, Eduix ltd (Finland) and Glowdom (Namibia) to start education digital transformation in Namibia. Here we introduce preliminary results and experiences we have gotten during the first year of the project. We also present preliminary information about the new stages of the project. The main research question is: “What is the role of education ecosystem in education digitalization, and how it should be taken into account in education digitalization projects?”

Keywords:

Education, digitalization, ecosystem, sustainable and persistent change.