Educational leaders need a new literacy for a new age
There is a new age dawning. Some call it the second machine age, or the 4th industrial revolution. Whatever the name, the combination of machine learning, cloud computing, digital sensors, and mobile devices are the basis of a new economy. Like the last industrial revolutions, the new logic of production mandates organizations change or die.
Education is not exempt from this process. Leaders who navigate the growing waves of change can transform the industry — others will find themselves falling further behind and eventually sunk.
These technologies are here now. They will continue to get cheaper while increasing in quality and accessibility. Modern, purpose-built chips will improve machine learning efficiency. Computers will learn how to program themselves to take advantage of the new hardware. Mobile devices will continue to change the way we interact with our world. Augmented and virtual reality will enable new types of experiences. Digital sensors will improve efficiency and allow for new kinds of physical interactions.
Those who can harness the new wave of change will have the opportunity to shape the coming decades. Digital surfers will transform their student experience and re-imagine their business processes. The most advanced learn how to serve new groups of learners.
Those who don’t paddle out to meet the wave are going to be under it. We mustn’t kid ourselves; many organizations won’t survive. Public institutions will fail to meet the needs of their users. Unfortunately, many of them will be our schools and universities.
However, we need education organizations to change, do it faster, more than ever. Experts on workplace change estimate the world economy will need to retrain over a billion people in the next few decades. Population growth will add at least another billion by the end of the century. The need for education will grow faster than the capabilities of the current system.
At the same time, most educational institutions in the G8 are facing a perfect storm. Aging populations, income inequality, and technological change all threaten the current business model. The number of school-age students will continue to fall. Austerity constrains most institutions when they need to invest in new technology. Technology has allowed a new class of entrants to start taking students.
Most educational institutions are poorly placed to adapt to these changes. Most educational leaders lack digital literacy, which is understandable given their backgrounds. But this will not save them from the radical transformations ahead.
We need educational leaders who understand when and why to apply digital technology. They will redesign organizational models, value chains, and user interactions. Their organizations will
What do we mean when by digital literacy? Traditional literacy is the ability to read and engage with a text. Digital literacy is the ability to read and engage with digital technology. Reading a technology means understanding its capabilities and limitations. Literacy means understanding how to use it to change a practice or a process. They can look beyond the hype and begin to see how it might impact their students.
Literate people have a variety of strategies to understand and interpret a text. Digitally literate leaders have a range of strategies to understand technology. They build on personal experience. They use social media and e-commerce. Then look to apply the lessons from those industries to their organizations. They encourage and engage in high-level experience design for students, faculty, and staff. They have an understanding of data-informed decision making.
Digitally literate leaders also understand how the limits of technology might change over time. They create fundamental change by understanding technology is a tool, not a panacea. They put the user and the user’s needs at the center of their vision. Discussions about technology are the core of the strategy.
Finally, digital literacy is not about coding or managing IT. Those skills are like learning to write poetry or understand a foreign language. Both can deepen literacy, but they aren’t necessary for reading a book. We can be literate in our native language without being able to do either of those things.
Digital literacy is similar. Understanding code will help leaders better understand the constraints. But it isn’t necessary for understanding how a customer relationship management system changes the conversation with students.
Educational organizations who cannot change will find themselves in a downward spiral. Their existing cost structure becomes an anchor. Unable to invest, they fall behind the leaders. Declining enrollment makes them less able to fund change. Eventually, the whole edifice collapses.
To avoid a future where we cannot meet the needs of all learners, we need educational leaders. We need to reinvent business models, value chains, and user interactions. We need digitally literate school leaders.
Photo Credit: Robert Bye (https://unsplash.com/photos/qdGZ6IrJCP8)
