You and your team have most likely overhauled your digital and social media practices over the last few years, ensuring all your content is digital and your website mobile-first. You may have even thrown a Tik Tok dance into the mix for good measure. But all instiutions rely on digital channels to engage with students, so how can you ensure you're leading the digital charge?

Picture the scene… you have this amazing idea that you’re sure will have a huge positive impact on the way your university recruits’ students. You and your team have documented shortcomings in your current processes and the software supporting them for what seems like forever.  

From June to September this year i-graduate ran a worldwide survey of local and international students about their study experiences during COVID-19. The survey targeted students who had been expecting to be studying on-campus in face-to-face mode, but due to COVID-19 had been required to suddenly switch to study online. Over 24,000 higher education students (15,000 local; 9,000 international) enrolled at 42 institutions across 11 countries responded to the survey.

Mike Cope spent ten years as CIO at University College London (UCL) before joining Tribal as CTO in 2019. Having seen first-hand the pushback on cloud adoption rates in the education sector for the last decade, Mike discusses why he believes there has been a shift in mindset over the last 12 months. 

The Covid-19 pandemic has brought global disruption to the Higher Education sector, severely impacting the functioning of international partnerships. Restrictions on movement and lockdown uncertainties have hampered the mobility of both international and home students, as well as staff.

The buzz globally has been for a while around employability and it will reach ‘fever pitch’ as countries emerge from COVID with their economies in various states of distress. As I’m sure you are all aware the debate has been centre stage in HE for a while and Brett Berquist (Director International, University of Auckland) has describe it as the ‘new arms race’ in international education.

Data from a recent global survey by i-graduate adds to the enormous body of data about COVID-19. i-graduate’s COVID-19 Response Barometer surveyed over 24,000 students in eleven countries and provides valuable insight into education institutions’ response to COVID-19 from the perspective of current students.

This article, part of a series drawing on the survey data, was originally conceived to explore to what extent government policy has impacted students’ satisfaction with their institution’s response to COVID-19. However, it quickly became apparent that the situation is too complex to draw any meaningful conclusions on this.

National comparisons in themselves, however, provide some food for thought.

It is abundantly clear that countries around the world have reacted very differently to the COVID pandemic and when we reach the other side of this, we may eventually get a better perspective on whose strategy was the most successful. In Higher Education it has been a gargantuan struggle to get courses online at short notice as well as providing security and safety for students.

I-graduate’s COVID survey seeks to get a global sense of student satisfaction with the institutional response both in terms of the communication to the students about the pandemic and the quality of the online provision. We had responses from over 24,000 students.

Migrating services to the cloud in higher education is happening at a faster rate than ever before. According to Tribal’s CTO, Mike Cope, this is primarily because the sector’s appetite for risk has changed as education institutions seek solutions that provide the most up to date capability, for the maximum number of use cases, whilst also providing enough flexibility to adapt to increasingly frequent business changes.