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Higher education is neglecting a key area in digital transformation: opinion
Universities and colleges have made great progress in their journey towards digital transformation, but many still have a long way to go.
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I have yet to find a chatbot that works for any sort of enquiry in any sort of organisation – let alone the complex enquiries related to universities. And searching through knowledge bases? They are rarely effective either, and very time consuming. Students need to be able to talk to, and get support from other humans who have knowledge of the student experience and how to find answers. The actual problem is lack of resourcing – if staff have email or phone call overwhelm, the problem is a lack of staff, not the absence of a chatbot. Aren’t we all tired of the “your call is important to us” messages while we wait for ages and ages to have a call answered. If universities want to actually help and support students then they need to resource and address the problem, not provide a cheap and ineffective technology-based “solution”. If our calls for help were actually important, they would answer them, not inflict another chatbot on us.
What a happy coincidence that the VP Marketing of an online customer engagement platform finds that the solution to digital transformation in HE is for them to buy an online customer engagement platform.
This is pitiful Campus Review, I hope you were well paid for this.
As soon as someone earnestly refers to ‘digital natives’ I know that they have nothing worth saying.
This article is rubbish. You have not proven why universities need to increase their digital reliance. Students do not prefer chatbots. You could simply employ more support staff. Why is there high staff turnover? Address that. 2022 students are not necessarily better with technical equipment than older persons, in my experience.