This document outlines six key characteristics for increasing technology adoption in higher education institutions: leadership from top administrators, institutional commitment through investment, robust and reliable infrastructure, effective support for academic staff, demonstrating benefits to students and staff, and using evidence-based decision making. It provides recommendations in each area and case studies of institutions that have successfully adopted technology. The overall document serves to guide institutions on best practices for improving technology adoption across their programs and curriculum.

1. Factors impacting the success in
increasing adoption
Bill Ashraf, Strategic Consultant, APAC,
Blackboard

2. What are Strategic Services?
Strategic Services support institutions in achieving their learning and
organizational vision through the use of learning technologies on any platform.
Strategic Services include:
• Strategic review and planning
• Readiness Assessment
• Change Management Strategic review and planning
Platform Services that deliver customized support, adoption and
implementation to enable optimal performance
Custom Development Services that encompass the design and delivery of
customer-specific IT strategies and implementation programs
2

3. What are Strategic Services?
Platform Services that deliver customized support, adoption and implementation to
enable optimal performance
• Technology adoption
• Implementation and training
• Mentoring and coaching
• Ongoing support and maintenance services
• Solution design
• Review and benchmarking
3

4. Blackboard Consulting
4
Global Impact
1,396 Clients Served
Over 5,000 Individual Projects
150 professionals + a global network of partners

5. Six Characteristics To Increase Technology Adoption
• Leadership from the top
• Institutional commitment and investment
• Robust and reliable infrastructure
• Effective and available support for academic staff
• Ability to demonstrate the benefits to the student and staff
• Evidence-based decision-making and a continuous cycle of
improvement
5

6. 1. Academic Leadership from the top
Creating a shared vision for
technology enhanced learning
for a curriculum which is
technology rich in its delivery
and content. Aligning this
vision to the Learning and
Teaching strategy
6
Recommendations
• Facilitating ‘Focus on...’ sessions for
the executive leadership team. These
are effective forums for exploring
and clarifying the benefits of new
technology among senior managers.
• Developing a 3-5 year
learning technology
strategic plan, specifying objectives,
adoption goals and developmental
cycles.

7. Desire to grow online provision and to extend the use of
technology across all provision in blended/hybrid mode.
Specific focus on the development of taught postgraduate
masters provision
Postgraduate Curriculum Redesign
7
Located in Manchester,
United Kingdom
Founded 1824
39,000 students

8. 2. Institutional commitment and investment
With leadership from the top
in the form of a strong
executive sponsor and
articulation of how the change
supports strategic goals –
institutional commitment is
further demonstrated through
investment
8
Recommendations
• Establishing an institutional change
management programme led by a
senior executive that supports the
academic community through the
transition.
• Providing mechanisms
to recognise and reward
those who make a positive
contribution and set standards
across the institution.

9. Way Forward: Education and Students - an ambitious
programme of transformation within the institution
• “consistently be among the top 100 universities in
the world and the top 20 in the UK’
• driving international and postgraduate recruitment,
• increasing international opportunities and
• improving overall student satisfaction
Becoming a Top 100 University
9
Located in Cardiff,
United Kingdom
Founded 1884
28,500 students

10. 3. Robust and reliable infrastructure
Learning technology is playing
a central and mission critical
role in delivering high quality
learning opportunities and
supporting the broader
student experience
10
Ask the following
• Is learning technology available
24/7?
• Can it perform at the speed users
need?
• Does it work as expected?
• Is it accessible across all platforms
and devices?
• What metrics are shared with your
academic community?

11. • Strategic move to a managed hosting solution, in order to
remove any worries about performance and uptime.
• Hosting service has led to significant improvements;
faster migrations, smoother running, greater innovations
and an even stronger uptake of Blackboard Learn
Improving Service Using Managed Hosting
11
Located in Groningen,
Netherlands
Founded 1614
30,000 students

12. 4. Effective Support for academic staff
For most academic staff,
adopting learning technology
for the first time is a change to
their well-established and
proven practice
• Technical
• Technology skills development
• Pedagogical best practices
12
Recommendations
• Developing an informal diagnostic or
questionnaire
• Considering introducing student
employees and interns to the
learning technology support
structure
• Peer Mentoring
• Making course development
manageable

13. 5. Ability to demonstrate the benefits to the student and staff
It is vital that the impact and
benefits to the learner are
considered as well as that of
the staff when adopting new
technology
13
Recommendations :
• Collating and publishing “one
paragraph” case studies
• Looking for quick wins that
positively impact the learner
experience
• Recruiting champions and convert
the late adopters
• Recognition
• Point out the positives

14. 6. Evidence-based decision-making and continuous cycle
of improvement
The adoption of technology in
teaching and learning
frequently raises questions
about how it impacts on
students’ success, improves
the student experience and
makes effective use of staff
time.
14
Recommendations
What is our evaluation strategy?
• How is adoption measured?
• What’s the baseline?
• What evidence is needed to make good
decisions?
Learning Analytics
• Leveraging data across different
data sources
• measure the impact of technology
adoption
• Large data sets of learner activity

15. Institution wanted to explore whether the data it held could
help
• Identify at-risk students & increase student engagement
• Find relationships between student activity and success
• Transform data into information
Using different data sources to build combined self-service
reporting and using as part of course evaluation
Informed by an Australian Government funded research project
Learning Analytics: Assisting Universities in Student Retention
Learning Analytics for Retention
15
Located in Darwin,
Australia
Founded 1989
21,000 students

16. Six Characteristics To Increase Technology Adoption
• Leadership from the top
• Institutional commitment and investment
• Robust and reliable infrastructure
• Effective and available support for academic staff
• Ability to demonstrate the benefits to the student and staff
• Evidence-based decision-making and a continuous cycle of
improvement
16

17. Acknowledgements
Louise Thorpe
Head of Strategic Services & EMEA Market Lead
Blackboard Consulting
Blackboard International
17

18. 18

19. 19

20. 20