Institutional Yoga

Keeping your organization flexible and innovative in challenging times 

COVID has changed much less in most industries than many commentators would have us believe.  

In higher education, digital transformation has already been a priority for some time. Likewise, shrinking budgets, growing student expectations, and society’s shifting attitude towards higher education are nothing new. They’re simply large-scale, slow moving trends that COVID has caused to rapidly accelerate. 

The need to simplify and optimize digital integrations is now paramount. The ability to study and work remotely or online has gone from novelty to selling point to necessity.  

And behind the scenes, the need to simplify administration to improve student and staff experiences is greater than ever. As is the drive to proactively identify efficiencies in order to make the most of budgets, grants, and staff and faculty time. 

All of this requires a great deal of flexibility from institutions. A level of adaptability that doesn’t come naturally and which requires real effort at every level. 

Which is why we’re inviting you to join us for an exploration of  institutional yoga. To help you develop your ability to flex and meet the challenges of the modern market. 

Identifying the challenges 

EDUCAUSE’s Top 10 IT issues for the sector illustrates this very clearly, highlighting four key themes: 

     1. Simplify 

The current climate calls for a mixture of digital integration and administrative streamlining. Ensuring systems are inter-operable, scalable, and fit for purpose across operational, security and governance standards. And re-imagining systems from a perspective of user friendliness and experience, and the elimination of redundancies – in both platforms and processes. 

     2. Sustain 

A broad theme covering everything from the need to guarantee privacy and security while ensuring that higher education remains affordable and systems can be funded in a reasonable and practical way given the growing demands being placed on IT infrastructure. 

     3. Innovate 

Governing the need to move beyond simply finding efficiencies and into tackling the big questions – improving enrolment, guaranteeing student retention and completion, and taking steps towards a student-centric model of learning.  

All three of these themes influence and are influenced by the fourth: 

     4. The drive to Dx. 

Given the challenges currently facing the sector, nothing less than true transformative change will do. Not just a transformation of enterprise infrastructure, but of organizational culture. Digital experience will be the ultimate mechanism that allows this change – as well as being part of the goal itself. And delivering great Dx requires flexibility and ingenuity – in the technology your institution chooses to use and the people it chooses to employ. 

Institutional Yoga – limbering up to meet the challenges 

We’ve created our program of institutional yoga to help you achieve this flexibility. After all, lifelong learning is something you expect from your students. It’s only right you should expect it from your institution too. 

Finding flexibility means being willing to transform the way your organization manages student relations, the cultural approach you take to the delivery of academic and non-academic services, and how the institution uses technology in its operations. 

Institutional Yoga is the beginning of a new way of viewing how your organization operates. Whatever your current fee structure, term schedule, and curriculum approach, we can help you develop your infrastructure in a way that allows you to configure and reconfigure your ways of working freely. Creating systems that your staff can use in ways that make sense to them, and allowing students to interact with your institution on terms that suit them. 

The gold standard 

And for those who truly embrace it, we’re perfectly positioned to help. As an EDUCAUSE Gold Partner we’re committed to the future of the higher education industry. Ready to help you meet the challenges of a changing market head on.