Category Archives: productivity of digital schools

Digitizing the School Administration

Mal Lee and Roger Broadie

An oft forgotten but increasingly important aspect of digital evolution and creating the desired increasingly effective and productive school ecosystem is the digitization of the school administration. In the same way, the move to a digital operational paradigm obliges the school to markedly transform its culture, organizational structures, teaching and communications so too it needs simultaneously to develop an administration appropriate for an ever evolving digital and socially networked school, and society.

Within the traditional, highly segmented, paper based school with its pronounced division of labour, where most of the administration and communication was handled by the ‘office staff’ school administration barely rated a mention in the literature on the school development.

It was a largely ancillary operation that most educators, including many in leadership roles, knew or cared little about.

All that changes and changes significantly when the school moves to a digital operational mode and creates a tightly integrated digitally based ecosystem.  The old divisions of labour are blurred and the internal walls are lowered or removed as the educational and the administrative operations are seamlessly intertwined. Educators who previously needed the services of an administrator to carry out a task can now usually do the task themselves, while administrators who previously required teachers to be involved in the process of communicating administration functions to pupils and parents and in following up to ensure completion can now often do this directly.

The digitization of the administration directly impacts the growth and evolution of the total school ecosystem, and helps drives the increased productivity, effectiveness and efficiency of all school operations, educational as well as administrative. An increasingly sophisticated, integrated, effective and secure, client focussed, user friendly digitally based administration is critical in helping position the school for continued growth and the enhancement of learning.

It thus vital from the start of the evolutionary journey the school leadership factors into the shaping of the desired totality the apt digitization of the school administration, linking it integrally with all the other developments.

The modifier ‘apt’ is very important. Invariably schools have for years made greater use of the digital in the administration than in their teaching, but while usage is invariably spotted, silo like and seldom tied to the creation of the desired culture and ecosystem and the realisation of the school’s shaping vision.  It needs to be. Forty years ago, Mal was associated with the digitization of the student assessment in the Australian Capital Territory’s secondary colleges.  It was rightly seen as an administrative breakthrough but was not directly linked to the creation of an integrated learning environment. The same continues to happen today.  Indeed, many of the moves with administrative systems, particularly those imposed on schools by government and education authorities work to create a culture antithetical to that the school is wishing to create.

It is very important to both choose and configure systems that support the school’s shaping vision.

It is moreover important to employ digital systems that also enhance the school’s productivity, and minimise the administrative load of the users, the staff and the clients. Sadly, the history of the use of the digital in school administration is characterised by the rhetoric far exceeding the reality and the inability of the technology providers to deliver their promises. While great advances have been made in recent years and there are some highly sophisticated and effective apps and Cloud services schools can use, all too often schools globally are obliged to use systems that add to the user’s workload and frustration.

Going digital is not some magic panacea. It must be done well, always supporting the realisation of the school’s shaping educational vision.

Schools should work from the outset on the assumption that the school will want not only to astutely digitize all its administration but also to have all its operations in a form, and with an appropriate level of security, where virtually every facet can be accessed 24/7/365.  Understand that you’ll want to;

  • merge the digitization of the administration with the shaping of the desired totality
  • move all the current paper based practises to the digital
  • do so as soon as is feasible, aware the timing needs fit with other ecosystem developments
  • use digital services consonant with the school’s shaping vision and the desired culture and ecosystem, and which enhance the school’s productivity
  • distribute the administrative load enabling wherever feasible the users to control their ‘accounts’, be it to edit an email, change an address, to notify an absence, to complete a form or to make a payment.
  • a structure that allows the school to readily and inexpensively to update services and to take advantage of better apps, Cloud services and yet unknown facilities when the moment comes.

The approach should be one of identifying who is the most appropriate person to have responsibility for a task and to enable that person to complete the whole task, communicating with and involving others digitally as appropriate. Junior people are enabled to take greater responsibility while senior people can avoid putting loads onto others through being able to time-effectively complete those parts of the task they have previously delegate to others

In going digital, and networked the school has always to be conscious of the security of the services. But in saying the school should also be realistic and nuanced, and identify which administrative processes can be made freely available to all and which need some degree of security.

While the initial digitization moves should rightly be the shift away from the paper based practises allied should be the replacement of dated non Web based systems with those than can be accessed anywhere, anytime 24/7/365.

Carefully scrutinise the school’s continued use of any tailored digital systems, particularly those hosted by the school that might be better performed, more cheaply by Cloud based services.

Understanding the current situation in your school identify which of the current

  • paper based processes should be digitized first
  • digital operations need to be updated by an app or Web based service
  • operations (if any) aren’t consonant with the kind of ecosystem and culture you want to create and which the school needs to try and rectify.

It is appreciated that many schools will be obliged to use systems dictated by government.  Bureaucracies have become very adept at using the networked administrative systems to control and micro manage ‘their’ schools.

Do your utmost to take charge of the school’s digitized administration and communication, and adopt solutions that advance the creation of the desired ecosystem and culture, understanding that at times the school will be obliged to use the mandated systems.

Set the goal of providing your staff and clients with a digitized administration at least on par with the best SME offerings, that continually reduces their workload while simultaneously improving the intuitively, efficiency, effectiveness, economies and productivity.

Recognise with the digitization of the administration you will likely experience, like elsewhere in the ecosystem, both the intended and unintended benefits, but also going on experience undesirable disbenefits. While the unintended should be optimised, the disbenefits will have to be removed.

Conclusion

While left to the end in this series the digitization of the school’s administration is no less important in the total scheme of things than any other of the many variables flagged for attention.

Indeed, in many respects the school’s app and its Web based administration will likely be many clients first encounter with the school.

Failure to get the administration to the level expected by a digital society and the school’s image will be markedly damaged and the school’s facility to offer an apt education for a digital and socially networked world seriously questioned.

It is a vital performance indicator.

 

Optimising the Intended and Unintended Benefits

This is an extension of the earlier observation about linear and non-linear growth, and how schools should ready themselves.

Mal Lee and Roger Broadie

In going digital and creating an increasingly mature digitally based school ecosystem factor into your school’s growth and enhancement the very real likelihood of reaping an increasing number of unplanned, unintended benefits.

Be on the lookout for their emergence and be prepared to optimise those that will advance the school.

Watch also for potential disbenefits, the unintended undesirable developments.

Address the digital evolution of your school with what Bhaduri and Fischer (2015) refer to as a digital mindset – and which others refer to as a networked mindset – that recognises in the midst of Digital Revolution it is impossible to identify with 100% certainty all the benefits that will flow from the introduction of new approaches and programs.

It is appreciated that is contrary to the long held belief of the educational administrators that school leaders have some divine ability to identify every benefit and measure the realisation of each over X number of years.

The reality, stressed in the earlier writings on the evolution of complex adaptive systems and natural non-linear growth, is that in most areas of schooling it is only ever possible at the outset of an initiative to identify a portion of the program benefits.

The business management literature has long understood this reality and advocated organisations employ appropriate benefits realisation processes.

Thorp writing as far back as 1998 observed:

Benefits rarely happen according to plan. A forecast of benefits to support the business case for an investment is just an early estimate. It is unlikely to turn out as expected, much like corporate earnings are forecast (Thorp, 1998, p38).

That observation was made in the relative stability of the 90’s well before the Digital Revolution took hold, the social networking of society and the digital transformation of all organisations had begun to impact in a significant way. One is talking pre Google, pre Facebook, pre smartphones and pre iPads, long before society in general had normalised the use of the digital and social networking.

The message coming very strongly from the pathfinder to the later adopter schools is that:

  • seek as usual to identify the desired benefits of each initiative

 

  • monitor and measure the realisation of each of the benefits, but at the same time
  • observe the emergence of any unintended benefits – and indeed disbenefits

 

  • work to optimise the desired unintended benefits and remove the undesirable effects

 

  • don’t automatically regard an initiative as a failure – as is now often done by administrators – simply because it doesn’t yield all the projected benefits. Understand the initial aspirations are but educated guesstimates and that it is crucial to factor in to any judgement the unintended benefits

 

  • the number of unintended benefits is likely to grow as the school’s digitally based ecosystem matures, becomes more tightly integrated, sophisticated and complex and interfaces with other ecosystems.

Be conscious that many of the unintended benefits singly appear small but when combined with many other seemingly small changes can significantly vary the school’s practises and enhance the productivity. For example the adoption of a seemingly simple school app can significantly impact the school’s communication and its relationship with its community.

In brief – in marked contrast to now – identify and measure the total impact of the program, looking always at both the intended and unintended benefits.

  • Thorpe, J (1998) The Information Paradox Toronto McGraw-Hill

 

Address the Totality, Not the Parts

Mal Lee and Roger Broadie

One of the more challenging tasks in shaping a digitally based school ecosystem is to focus on the desired totality, not the parts. School leaders need to shed their traditional school development thinking and its preoccupation with the parts, and put to the fore the shaping of the new ever evolving total entity.

Unwittingly, and here we include ourselves, we have a generation of school leaders, and indeed politicians who have been weaned on a factory model of organisational development, strongly impacted by Frederick Taylor’s work (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Winslow_Taylor), that has had us believe that by enhancing parts of the production line the overall organisation would be more effective and competitive.

That thinking might have been appropriate in the Industrial Age, but is not within a Digital Revolution, where the successful organisations are those tightly integrated school ecosystems evolving at pace.

Globally one continues to observe governments and all manner of educational leaders contending that if schools improve a segment of the school’s operations their overall performance and relevance will be enhanced. We thus see calls to improve the likes of the curriculum, the quality of teacher selection, pedagogy, professional development, resourcing and the digital technology but surprisingly few calls to create schools that can continually deliver in a rapidly evolving world.

Seemingly unaware of the Digital Revolution, the digital transformation that has fundamentally reshaped all manner of businesses and public sector organisations and the critical importance of increasingly productive digitally based ecosystems, globally in 2016 one finds scant call by educators to create schools appropriate for a digital and socially networked society.

It is simply assumed the old factory organisational model can play that role if parts are updated.

There appears to be little appreciation in education that digitally based organisations are fundamentally different to their old paper based counterparts.

The pathfinder schools understand the very considerable difference and are daily transforming their nature and form on the fly to better educate the young for today’s world.

Their focus is on shaping the desired evermore tightly integrated, mature, higher order and productive ecology – where the culture and all operations are directed towards realising the school’s shaping vision.

In that transformation they appreciate the kind of resourcing, teaching, professional development, digital ecosystem and program evaluation required in a digitally based, strongly socially networked 24/7/365 mode of schooling, that marries the in and out of school teaching and learning will be appreciably different to that off the traditional stand alone paper based school.

Simply focus on the parts, and moreover do so but within the school walls, and one will fail to understand the workings and requirements of socially networked school communities.

Schools Have to Go Digital to Remain Viable 2.0

This is the first of the 2016 series of short blogs on the digital evolution of schooling.  All posts in the series relate to the 10 Week Digital Leadership Programs.

Mal Lee and Roger Broadie

Schools in the developed world have to go digital if they are to remain viable (Lee and Broadie, 2015).

In the same way as the digital masters in industry are showing the way forward and are employing highly efficient and increasingly productive digitally based ecosystems to heighten their productivity and to win the custom so too are the pathfinder schools globally.

Indeed it is now apparent the traditional, much loved but highly inefficient, inflexible paper based school has as much chance of competing against a digital school as the local bookseller has against its online competition. Like the bookseller it might take a few years, but in time the viability of paper based schools will be increasingly tested.

In a world where the young and their parents – the clients of the school – have normalised the everyday, 24/7/365 use of the digital and have ever rising expectations of the technology it is already clear increasingly they will choose, when available those digital schools that meet or exceed their educational, cultural and digital expectations.

Schools can opt to continue operating within the paper based paradigm, unilaterally deciding what is educationally appropriate, focussing on paper based external exams, banning the use of the students’ digital technologies, daily lagging ever further behind both society’s rising digital expectations and the pathfinder schools astute all pervasive use of the digital but each day they do they take themselves further out of the game.

Where the traditional insular paper based mode of schooling has after a hundred plus years maximised its potential the digital, socially networked mode of schooling is just beginning to tap its immense potential and to markedly enhance its productivity.

The digital evolution of the pathfinder schools, and their adoption of increasingly integrated, mature, powerful and agile digitally based ecosystems has highlighted not only their immense potential and their ready facility to realise that potential but also the very considerable structural limitations and inefficiencies of the traditional mode of schooling. Where the former is structurally and culturally highly agile and equipped to accommodate rapid on-going change and evolution the latter is structurally inflexible, and change and risk adverse. Even well led elementary schools will take approximately five years of concerted effort to reach the Digital Normalisation stage.

Sit down and compare the educational, cultural, social, economic benefits, and the likely productivity of a paper based and digital school and it obvious why all schools will have to go digital to have a hope of remaining viable.

Ask yourself the simple question, to which would you send your children?

 

Digital Schools Grow Digital Communities

Mal Lee

It is becoming increasingly apparent that when schools normalise the use of the digital, employ a mature digital ecosystem and become networked school communities the schools not only markedly enhance the learning of the students, but they also develop a synergistic relationship with their community, that assists both it and the school to grow digitally.

We have been aware for some time it takes a digital village to educate the child in a socially networked world.

What is becoming clearer is that digital schools in playing that lead role in providing that education are unwittingly, simultaneously and without any concerted effort assisting grow the school’s digital community and that community in turn is assisting grow the school.

Digital schools are unwittingly and naturally helping to grow the lives and economic capability of their community.

Traditionally schools researchers have focussed on the student learning within the school walls, and the impact of the various variables within the school upon the learners.

In a digital and networked society when schools become networked school communities, whose impact transcends the school walls and where increasingly unintended dividends flow from the evolution of schools as complex adaptive systems it is vital one addresses all the changes being made by the digital, the intended and the unintended, the educational and the far wider.

It is time to look outside the box, to look not simply at the impact on student learning, and to identify and optimise the desired unintended benefits – as is done in industry. As organisations become more integrated, with all the operations interconnected and ever evolving it is critical to examine the evolving totality.

It is also time for school leaders, education authorities and governments, local and national, to recognise that when schools go digital and networked the school will impact on the wider socially networked society and as such that impact needs to be understood and where apt built upon.

In going digital and networked schooling should no longer be regarded as a stand-alone enclave that is the preserve of the professional educators, but rather as integral part of the evolving networked society and economy.

While the prime focus of schools should be the provision of the desired student learning when digital schools can simultaneously and without any extra effort or expense markedly assist the growth of digital communities and their earning capacity that capability should be tapped.

The Digital School and its Community.

In normalising the total school community’s use of the digital largely unwittingly the pathfinder schools have

  • strongly proclaimed and daily demonstrated to their homes – their clients – the critical importance of the digital in the children’s 24/7/365 schooling and growth
  • grown not only the digital competence and creativity of the students but simultaneously that of the parents, siblings, carers, grandparents and family friends
  • forever changed the parents – the clients – view and expectations of schooling and helped them recognise the school’s dynamic, ever evolving nature
  • assisted strengthen the parent’s digital mindset, enhanced their understanding of digital learning ecologies, and on-going transformation and the need in an evolving digital world of shaping the desired future, taking risks and learning on the move
  • assisted open the eyes of those in the homes to the emerging possibilities with the digital in their own lives, work and education
  • enhanced the homes’ appreciation of the critical importance of astutely integrated digital ecosystems
  • in their trust of and close collaboration with their homes daily, without any extra effort or expense on the school’s part accounted for their teaching practises and strongly marketed the school
  • moved the school to the position where the ecology naturally educates current and prospective parents on the evolving nature and expectations of the digital school.

Interestingly most of this has been done as an unintended ‘by product’ of digital normalisation and the move to a 24/7/365 mode of schooling, with minimal effort or expense from the school. Yes all the pathfinder schools have in going digital spent time and effort early on educating their parents to the new ways but as the change took hold with both the students and parents, and the digital ecosystem matured so that need decreased as the natural evolutionary growth impacted.

In being proactive, fostering a culture of change, distributing the control of the teaching and learning, in genuinely collaborating with the parents, in trusting the children to use their own digital kit, in adopting open websites and opening the door to the school’s workings and critically in having the digital underpin all school operations the school is not only better educating the children but is simultaneously unwittingly bidding and supporting all within the homes to lift their digital competence. Those parents, and in particular those grandparents not using current digital technologies feel compelled to get and keep up to speed. All within the home largely unsaid lift their digital capability. Home networks are upgraded. Birthdays and Christmas become important technology upgrade occasions. As the children make use in and out of school of the emerging apps, the various online offerings and facilities like Google’s applications for education so there is a natural desire by all in the family to be able to use those facilities as well.

While there is in the pathfinder schools a spread of digital expertise the parents, from information industry professionals through to the early users, it appears the digital understanding and mindset of the total group is continually being lifted as the technology becomes more sophisticated, knowledge of its possibilities grows, the school continually updates its practises and the expectations rise. While still embryonic it is interesting to observe the number associated with a pathfinder school also desirous of promoting the creation of digital start ups.

While further research is needed talk to any within the parent community of the pathfinder schools and you’ll soon appreciate how strongly and naturally they have embraced the digital and switched on they are to the digital possibilities. This is a clientele, increasingly Millennial, as Westerman et.al (2014) reveal, who no longer differentiate between online and face-to-face experiences, who out the school walls have already normalised the use of the digital.

The school community wide impact of the digital upon the wider school community can be evidenced in two seemingly small examples, the adoption of the school app, and the integrated teaching of coding from the early childhood upwards.

In opting to formally communicate with the children’s homes and the school’s wider community via a school app, and an app intended primarily for mobile technology the school community soon abandoned long established paper based practises and limited expectations and embraced a mode for clients living and working in an ever evolving, time short digital world. The apps readily and inexpensively handled all types of tailored digital communiques, from regular lengthy e-newsletters, reports, quick surveys and emergency notices. They completely replaced all manner of slow and inefficient paper communiques. In observing how the parents of children on a year cohort excursion were notified digitally of a delay because of traffic it struck me:

  • how attuned the school was to its client’s, and their 2015 expectations
  • how poor had schools been in looking after their clients, all too often using the communications challenge to do nothing.

Similarly in observing the ease with which a group of 6-7 year olds had incorporated coding – using Scratch – in their small group creation of an e-book for English it impressed how

  • at ease were the children with the facility and applying its underpinning logic
  • many skills and concepts they were simultaneously addressing and developing in the one integrating task
  • different it was to traditional segmented silo like teaching
  • transferable were the suite of skills and attributes being developed to most other areas of future study, work and life
  • important it was for the parents and the wider school community to understand and build upon the children’s 21st century capabilities.

When one encounters young ones eager to demonstrate their coding skills and hears 7 year olds casually commenting that the image for the e-book is in her Dropbox one can soon appreciate why the parents are daily experiencing a mode of schooling and teaching through their children’s eyes dramatically different to their own but which they can see is appreciably more relevant and meaningful.

In accommodating these new digital practises, in understanding and supporting their children’s digitally based learning, in appreciating its 24/7/365 nature the parent community will continually enhance its digital understanding, capability and connectedness.

As it does, as it strengthens its bond with the school, as it pools its resources and expertise with those of the school and comes to ‘own the school’, as the community members involve themselves in other digital initiatives the parent community like the school staff will continue to lift its understanding of the digital, to better appreciate the kind of opportunities opened by digital evolution and will continually lift its expectations of the school.

It will, usually unwittingly, continually expect that much more of already very good schools but in contrast to the past where they had been shut out will build on the close ties with and macro understanding of the school and assist in all manner of ways the school to grow and continue its digital evolution and transformation.

What is already apparent globally is that as the digital standing of the pathfinder schools grows so too will be the demand to enrol extra students in the school. The corollary is that the demand for places in nearby paper based and late adopter schools will likely fall and put the viability of those schools under serious question.

Conclusion

In making these observations it is appreciated that in 2015 the number of pathfinder schools globally that have normalised the 24/7/365 use of the digital and grown their digital community is small.

Notwithstanding those schools are the vanguard of what is to come, the attributes they are displaying being a logical extension of the trends evidenced in their evolutionary journey (Lee and Broadie, 2015) and consistent with the wider digital transformation of organisations.

The micro ecosystems these pathfinder schools are impacting are most readily apparent in villages and small regional towns, but the likely reality is that on closer examination they’ll also be found around the pathfinders in the cities.

The hope is that this short note will open eyes and minds to the societal and economic implications of the development and what astute communities and their leaders could do.

  • Lee, M and Broadie, R (2015) A Taxonomy of School Evolutionary Stages Broulee Australia – Retrieved 20 April 2015 – http://www.digitalevolutionofschooling.net
  • Westerman, G, Bonnett, D and McAfee, A (2014) Leading Digital. Turning Technology into Business Transformation, Boston, Harvard Business Review Press