Digital transformation (Dx) has arrived in higher education—due in no small part to the widespread disruption brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. Even as institutions weigh returning to campus and "normal" operations in the waning phases of the pandemic, our shared experiences over the past 20 months have undoubtedly shown many higher education leaders and faculty the strategic value of investing in a robust technology infrastructure and building flexible course modalities and education models that can position institutions to weather future crises. In other words, although the pandemic should eventually abate, the valuable lessons from it should endure.

Many minority serving institutions (MSIs)—institutions designated as serving a significant percentage of minority students, such as Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSIs)—have faced unique challenges throughout the pandemic and now face unique opportunities on the road ahead. MSIs have been hit especially hard by enrollment declines over the past year—the US Department of Education reports enrollment declines for 63% of the MSIs and Tribal Colleges and Universities (TCUs) that provided their enrollment data, with 32% of these institutions reporting at least a 10% decline in enrollment in 2020.1 The shift to online modes of working and teaching has also proved challenging for many of these institutions, focused as they traditionally are on cultivating community and a sense of belonging through in-person learning and campus experiences, and as constrained as many of them have been in the resources needed to invest in better online and technology capabilities.2

This particular set of pandemic challenges has opened up new opportunities for growth, however, as a number of federal and philanthropic initiatives have emerged with the intent of enriching MSIs' technology and online resources for the future. The Department of Commerce's National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) is leading the $268 million Connecting Minority Communities Pilot Program, which is focused on expanding broadband access for eligible MSIs.3 Meanwhile, philanthropic groups such as the United Negro College Fund and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation have released funds for the purposes of improving digital learning and faculty development at HBCUs specifically.

In this report, we examine both the challenges and successes MSIs have experienced over the past year-and-a-half and the opportunities they now face on the road ahead, first by taking a closer look at recent EDUCAUSE QuickPoll data and then by hearing directly from two HBCU technology leaders. Our hope is that this resource can make a rich contribution to the national dialogue taking shape around the futures of MSIs and provide MSI leaders with next steps forward as they chart out their own digital transformation journeys.

First, an understanding of what Dx is as well as what it is not is helpful as we consider the Dx journeys of MSIs. Dx is not just about moving information and activities online. And it's not just about technology. Rather, Dx is the process of optimizing and transforming the institution's operations, strategic directions, and value proposition through deep and coordinated shifts in culture, workforce, and technology.4 That focus on institutional transformation is crucial to the idea of Dx.

EDUCAUSE has identified four grand challenges in higher education that can be seen as drivers for institutional transformation, challenges related to student success, financial health, reputation and relevance, and external competition.5 The Dx journey can address any of these challenges. EDUCAUSE research shows that many of the top areas of Dx focus in higher education in 2021 are directed toward students, including efforts to improve student learning, faculty teaching, admissions, and enrollment. Other Dx efforts are focused on improving functions that can enable more transformative Dx efforts in the future, such as strategic planning, finance and budget, and procurement.6

The COVID-19 pandemic has added yet another grand challenge that can be addressed through Dx. Through the pandemic, colleges and universities have been accelerating their transformation efforts, regardless of whether they were prepared for change or had a transformation strategy in place. We are seeing evidence that in responding to the pandemic, institutions are prioritizing efforts that bring the greatest value and most tangible results in a deep and coordinated fashion. They are, in effect, embracing Dx, intentionally or not, as a matter of survival. Dx has become both a challenge area—something that institutions are trying to improve or achieve—and a strategy.

Different institutions engage in Dx differently, of course, according to their local contexts, their available staffing and resources and capabilities, and their institutional mission and goals. MSIs, as one distinct type of institution, may understand and approach Dx somewhat uniquely given the common missions they share, their common resource opportunities and challenges, and the particular student communities they serve. It is to these experiences of Dx among MSIs that we now turn, drawing on recent EDUCAUSE survey data.

In an EDUCAUSE QuickPoll survey conducted earlier this year, we found that the COVID-19 pandemic has indeed accelerated engagement in Dx across institutions in general. Whereas a mere 13% of IT professionals in 2019 reported that their institution was engaged in Dx, a full 44% of IT professionals reported the same in this year's survey (see figure 1). Asked to what extent their institution's engagement in Dx has been accelerated by the pandemic specifically, 79% of respondents to this year's survey reported that the pandemic has accelerated their institution's Dx to a "moderate" or "large" extent.

These findings reflect general trends across all institution types, but what of our survey respondents representing MSIs more specifically? How and to what degree, if at all, did their responses to our QuickPoll survey differ from the responses of all other respondents? Fortunately, 60 of the respondents to our Dx QuickPoll survey were IT professionals representing MSIs, providing us at least a high-level snapshot of some of the common experiences, opportunities, and challenges MSIs may be facing as they explore Dx.

The pandemic's acceleration of institutions' engagement in Dx appears to be even more pronounced among MSIs than among all other institutions. Although a similar proportion of MSI respondents reported that their institution is currently engaged in Dx when compared with all other respondents (see figure 2), a significantly larger proportion of MSI respondents reported that their institution is in the nascent stage of "developing a strategy." Moreover, a larger proportion of MSI respondents indicated that the pandemic had accelerated their institution's engagement in Dx to a "large" extent when compared with all other respondents.

When asked about the barriers to Dx that their institution may be facing, two items in particular appear to be more problematic for MSIs, both centered around data-related processes and capabilities. For "concerns about safeguarding individuals' data privacy" and "insufficient level of digitized information," a significantly larger proportion of MSI respondents rated these as "major" barriers for their institution when compared with all other respondents (see figure 3).

Interestingly, the processes of organizing and digitizing information have been identified by EDUCAUSE as some of the earliest stages of an institution's journey toward digital transformation.7 Taken together, these findings begin to paint a picture of MSIs in the early stages of digital transformation—developing their Dx strategy for the future and wrestling with those earlier challenges of managing their data—in many cases out of the necessities introduced by COVID-19. It's a moment of positive momentum and great opportunity for these institutions, in other words.

But what specific strategies and solutions are individual institutions deploying or exploring in order to seize on this momentum and opportunity? We now turn to two institutions—Stillman College and Tennessee State University—to illustrate the ways in which leaders at some MSIs are thinking about and charting their new paths forward.

Kevin Harris, Chair, Department of Computational & Information Sciences, Stillman College

Historically, the science fields have leveraged technology as a means of improving research methods. Larger institutions of higher education embraced Dx early, then, in part because of the need for researchers to continue pushing boundaries and innovate to support cutting-edge research efforts. Institutions with a primary focus on teaching and learning have typically not required the same academic computing power, relying on the knowledge of faculty to prepare students of various disciplines for entry into the workforce. However, technology has evolved from a discipline-specific tool that offered some institutions a competitive advantage in specialized areas of Dx to one that is a strategic and operational requirement that most institutions need in order to carry out their mission. Indeed, we're seeing evidence across higher education of the importance of Dx in areas like athletics, academics, ROTC, health services, facilities, and police agencies.

The COVID-19 pandemic has further highlighted how technology impacts all areas of the institution, and technology leadership needs are changing accordingly with the increased adoption of Dx. While strong technical teams and technical managers are needed, Dx adoption can be improved if team leadership includes someone who understands not only technology but also the institution and higher education more broadly. Including Dx as a consideration in the institution's overall strategic planning helps ensure missional alignment as well as diverse stakeholder involvement across the institution and throughout the Dx journey.

Dx is not easy, of course, and can encounter many challenges. Funding is a large hurdle to overcome, for example, both in securing technology resources and in hiring qualified personnel. Deferred maintenance is a common topic among institutional leaders who know what buildings on their campus are in need of repair, slated for demolition, or approved for construction but who also know that those projects are tabled due to a lack of resources. For years, smaller institutions have done this with IT budgets, largely because technology did not impact these institutions' teaching and learning mission. Now these institutions are faced with the need to not only update their technology infrastructure to meet today's standards but also build an infrastructure that can support future needs.

At Stillman College, we've been adapting to today's needs and planning for tomorrow's in a number of ways. Like many institutions, our Dx journey has accelerated over the past year as we've responded to the COVID-19 pandemic. We've purchased devices for faculty and students to help enable and facilitate online teaching and learning during and beyond the pandemic. We equipped our police staff with temperature-scanning devices to monitor campus entry and help ensure campus safety and health. Longer term, we're developing strategic plans to update the institution's aging technology infrastructure and have already started implementing changes such as updating classrooms in the Math/Science building to include smartboards.

Future implementation models at Stillman include expanding academic curriculum to build the capacity of students in technology-focused majors, introducing additional degrees focused on technology, and integrating technology across academics in an interdisciplinary approach. Additionally, to ensure our community stakeholders and partners are broadly able to leverage Dx advancements, a technology training center is under development, with the goal of increasing technology awareness and literacy levels among our community partners and a particular focus on individuals and businesses that support underserved populations. Increasingly at Stillman we're recognizing that Dx is not just about technology innovation but is also an institution- and community-wide strategy that must be effectively implemented and managed in order for an institution to remain viable.

Sterlin Sanders, Interim Director of Technical Services, Director of User Services, Tennessee State University

Dx has been an important principle within our Information Technology Department and across the entire institution at Tennessee State. We are dedicated to leveraging technology to enhance the learning experience for students through the transformation of our processes, the quality of resources, and the enrichment of HBCU culture. Traditionally, the concept of Dx has been promoted through the expansion of online learning, the transition of services into the cloud, and planning for future implementations of new technology based on budget availability. However, here at TSU—along with the rest of the world—over the past year we've had to dramatically accelerate our Dx initiatives from stages of planning into fully functional deliverables.

The emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic caused a huge disruption to normal business operations at TSU. On March 13th, 2020, our university president notified all faculty, staff, and students that all on-campus services would cease in order to help slow the spread of the virus. Classes were closed for two weeks to allow the campus to transition all learning to an online format, posing a challenge for a large portion of classes that required in-person interactions to achieve their learning objectives. Key operational services at the institution were heavily impacted as well, as faculty and staff transitioned to work-from-home environments and as those faculty and staff without device access had to transport their office desktops to their homes. Overall, with all classes being taught online and all faculty and staff working from home outside of the TSU campus network, our IT department was faced with the tremendous task of implementing Dx to continue to support the student success of the university.

Some of our initial efforts in Dx consisted of establishing universal communication and learning instruction for the university. For learning, our eLearn program leadership expanded our Zoom licensing for all faculty and staff and arranged training for faculty to ensure they were familiar with setting up a class and with the general functionality of the application. For communication, we incorporated site-licensing for Microsoft Teams across the institution. Our office technology standard is the all-in-one PC model, which allows employees not only to communicate but to also conduct business remotely. Faculty and staff were readily available, given that both Zoom and Teams can be downloaded on phones and other mobile devices. And the screen-sharing features allowed departments such as financial aid, registrar, bursar, and others to show examples of their resources and continue to provide much needed detailed help to patrons. TSU also invested in the DocuSign digital documentation solution. Rather than requiring stakeholders to complete paperwork and submit documentation by hand to multiple locations, as had traditionally been done, forms and other pertinent information could now be completed online and stored securely in the cloud.

In August 2020, the university invested $3 million into purchasing 2,000 laptops. These laptops were distributed to our faculty, staff, and students who did not have access to technology at home. This was a win for those users who needed the tools but a complex support task for our IT department. With devices located off campus, these endpoints were outside our campus network. This presented our IT team with problems regarding the ability to provide remote support, perform elevated-access installs, and other troubleshooting needs. Zoom and Teams have screen-sharing capability but are very limited on administrative services used by IT staff to resolve issues. Therefore, we invested in the secure remote application Beyond Trust, a cross-platform, cross–operating system service that allows technicians to easily connect administrative tools to clients' computers. This solution has significantly increased IT productivity and the quality of support. Rather than having to drive hours to campus for a 10-minute application install, clients are now able to receive their requested services in a matter of minutes. Technicians are also able to operate with multiple windows of support instead of working with one client at a time.

Dx is about more than technology implementation, though. Communication and collaboration by far have been the most critical aspects of our Dx journey here at TSU. In particular, being a part of an IT team that facilitates feedback from clients regarding their technology needs has been very important. As an IT department, we are the administrators and facilitators of technology and can provide recommendations, but it is essential that we receive input from end users to understand how they can get the most value out of their use of technology. At TSU we've developed our IT strategic plan based on a technology committee that consists of both academic and administrative representatives, ensuring that our Dx efforts tie in with the mission and goals of the institution.

Currently, we're implementing more projects that tie directly to the EDUCAUSE concepts of Dx. We've acquired eFaxing, which replaces the old analog faxing technology and uses phone lines with email-based faxing. Although faculty, staff, and students have returned to campus, we've invested in upgrading our classrooms to a hybrid model with the installation of Panopto live streaming and recording. This allows our students to simultaneously experience both in-person and online learning at TSU. Our IT team has also improved the customer service experience with the implementation of an artificial intelligence chatbot via the company Ocelot. This will lead to a decrease in phone calls, emails, inquiries, and overall wait time by enabling our clients to seek readily available solutions via the chatbot.

Overall, Dx is essential for continued HBCU institutional success. Identifying the technology and adequate funding are essential. But the most important priorities of Dx are communication and collaboration. Digital transformation with intentional change along with a shift in culture, workforce, and technology can be guided by shared governance and accountability for both our IT team and our university administration. A well-established strategic plan, productive technology committees, and methods of acquiring clientele input will ensure the transformed culture of our HBCU institution.

While MSIs may share some common challenges, successes, and opportunities for the future, each institution's journey is uniquely its own, and each institution will need to determine its own Dx goals and next steps. Fortunately, institutions can explore and benefit from a number of supports as they begin or continue their journey.

EDUCAUSE has published a set of resources as a guide for institutions on their Dx journey. The Dx Journey Roadmap includes articles and case studies that help the EDUCAUSE community learn about digital transformation, as well as planning tools that lead to the development of an actionable Dx strategy for the institution. These tools include a Dx self-assessment, informational slides that can be downloaded and presented to stakeholders at your institution, and a step-by-step guide to designing a Dx strategy.

As a professional association, EDUCAUSE believes in and supports the power of bringing together peers to form their own communities and to share experiences and knowledge with one another. Institutional leaders might consider joining the EDUCAUSE Digital Transformation Community Group, for example, where members can post questions, share recent experiences, and make connections with other institutions on similar journeys.

Dx may indeed have arrived in higher education through our shared pandemic experiences, challenges, and opportunities. But where Dx goes from here, and how our institutions individually and collectively engage with it, is up to us and can be determined by the investments and decisions we make now and in the months and years ahead.

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