Fluent digital leadership is now vital for every leader in higher education

Edtech implementation in higher education has rapidly accelerated worldwide during the COVID pandemic as an emergency response to the ‘big bang’ of sudden urgent need. As online teaching and meeting spaces emerged as the new norm, fluent digital leadership became essential for effective edtech implementation.

The challenge now is for every organisational leader in higher education to learn from these developments and embrace digital leadership, as discussed in a recent 2021 higher education podcast series.

Digital leadership fluency, not just digital literacy

Digital leadership fluency is now vital for edtech to be implemented throughout higher education. Yet there is limited knowledge of what digital leadership is, how it should operate or how it is related to teaching, learning, management and organisational practice.

To explore such challenges, in the third episode of the Jisc HE Leaders Podcast series, Jonathan Baldwin, Jisc managing director for higher education, interviewed Geoff Layer, vice-chancellor of Wolverhampton University; Debra Gray, principal and deputy chief executive of the Grimsby Institute; and Priya Lakhani, CEO of Century Tech.

Layer, Gray and Lakhani discussed digital leadership and edtech issues emerging during COVID, considering how to create a culture that nurtures digital fluency and how to manage transformative experiences for students and staff within a long-term strategy for keeping up with edtech developments in embracing digital change.

Distinguishing between digital literacy and digital fluency, Gray said: “One of the things that strike me is that we were already quite digitally literate as an organisation. But we weren’t digitally fluent. We knew all of the stuff … but we’d never exercised it properly.

“And so, the key learning point for me has been [that], in order to develop fluency, it has to be deployed and executed, it can’t just be done in the abstract … to become digitally fluent, you have to be living and breathing it all the time. The pandemic ensured we had to do that. And I think we were, perhaps, picking that up piecemeal before.”

Embedding digital leadership

Digital leadership fluency should not, however, just be confined to a few people, nor focus only on online learning: it needs to be developed across higher education.

Developing this idea, Lakhani said: “Digital leadership has to be embraced by every leader in the organisation … It’s about using tools and technologies that augment and help you with your particular goals … And then ensuring that, in every corner of your organisation, every leader understands why it is important … digital leadership is ensuring that it’s embedded in your culture. It’s embedded throughout the veins of your organisation.”

Gray extended the debate on infusing digital leadership through institutions, saying: “For me, digital leadership is about enthusiasm, and knowledge, and passion, and drive, and ambition for your organisation, for your students, for your employers, and for your communities.

“It is not just one thing. It is interwoven into the fabric of everything we do. And my role as a leader in my organisation is to live and breathe those values.”

Part of this wide-ranging development is about ensuring digital leadership is not just delegated to enthusiasts or specialist edtech experts.

A full digital strategy

Gray reinforced the need to enable non-experts to feel safe experimenting with the digital: her strategy is “not to appoint an expert who then goes and tells everyone else … So, we create a safe space to play and experiment with technology.

“It’s okay to fail. It’s okay to try something. We have sandbox spaces where educators and business support staff can say: ‘Will this work? Can we have that conversation? Can we play around with it?’ We’ve got spaces where students can do that as well. And we celebrate digital achievements.”

Lakhani reinforced this, saying that “you don’t need to be a coder to understand digital and technology. No, no – you just need to understand how it applies and where the benefits are and what the opportunities are … this is just important so there is no one department … no one area, where they’re not able to embrace digital. Digital is also about how to use tools and technologies … So having a full digital strategy is really important.”

That important task of developing a full digital strategy in higher education is not only about taking care of current students and staff: it is also about looking to future developments.

Horizon-scanning for the future

Reflecting on future trends, Gray said: “Digital leadership… is about horizon-scanning. We are in the Fourth Industrial Revolution; there is no doubt about what’s coming towards us. It’s an acceleration of all things digital; the Internet of Things, artificial intelligence, the list is endless.

“That’s the world that our students will exit into for a lifetime career. If we don’t help them get a taste of that now, when we’re at the cusp of it, we’re actually letting them down. How must we adjust our delivery and our curriculum … to give them a chance in the future?”

Lakhani agreed, saying: “Digital is not in a silo. It’s not just about digital, it is about the whole fabric. How does digital play into learning habits of mind, engineering habits of mind, analytics, problem-solving, leadership?

“Get that strategy right. Start to implement it and start to execute it, and we’ll learn from our lessons as we go. We can’t afford not to.”

All speakers summed up by agreeing that fluent digital leadership is, therefore, now an essential priority for development with all leaders, right across higher education.

Jill Jameson is professor of education and chair of leadership in education research in the Centre for Professional Workforce Development, Institute for Lifecourse Development, faculty of education, health and human sciences, University of Greenwich. She was chair of the Society for Research into Higher Education from 2012-2017. This article is based on the third of a four-part JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee) HE Leaders Podcast 2021 series on higher education leadership in edtech post-COVID. The third episode focuses on digital leadership, digital fluency and keeping up with edtech.