Know What's Important and Where to Focus: Strategic Trends and Technologies

Since 2014, EDUCAUSE has examined higher education's top strategic technology priorities and the trends that influence institutional and IT strategy. The 2018 Higher Education's Top 10 Strategic Technologies and Trends research provides a snapshot of the relatively new technological investments colleges and universities will be spending the most time implementing, planning, and tracking, as well as the trends that influence IT directions in higher education. Together with the EDUCAUSE Top 10 IT Issues list (now in its 18th year), these resources help IT leaders know what's important and where to focus in their IT planning and management activities.

2018 Trends

Trends are the pervasive external factors that influence institutional and IT strategy and often shape institutional adoption of technologies. We studied 39 trends in 2018, ranging from adaptive learning to vendor relationships that bypass IT, ranking them from the most influential to those with limited influence (see figure 1). These five trends are exerting the most influence on higher education's IT strategy:

• Complexity of security threats
• Student success focus/imperatives
• Data-driven decision-making
• Contributions of IT to institutional operational excellence
• Increasing complexity of technology, architecture, and data

Each of these trends is influential at 61% or more of colleges and universities. Ten trends, including the Internet of Things and the applications and implications of artificial intelligence to higher education, have limited influence on institutional and IT strategy.

2018 Strategic Technologies

We studied 73 strategic technologies in 2018. Our definition of strategic technologies is specific — they are the relatively new technologies that institutions will be spending the most time implementing, planning for, and tracking in 2018. Tracking, planning, and implementing are strategic and forward-facing functions, not necessarily operational ones. None of the strategic technologies analyzed in this research is currently in place in more than 30% of institutions (our threshold for moving a new technology from a strategic to an operational mindset). This year's top 10 strategic technologies are characterized by technologies that will facilitate student success, teaching and learning, and moving to the cloud:

1. Uses of APIs
2. Active learning classrooms
3. Incorporation of mobile devices in teaching and learning
4. Mobile apps for enterprise applications
5. Technologies for improving analysis of student data
6. Technologies for planning and mapping student educational plans
7. Blended data center (on premises and cloud based)
8. Predictive analytics for student success (institutional level)
9. Database encryption
10. (tie) IT asset management tools (e.g., CMDB)
10. (tie) Student success planning systems

Our 2018 technologies and trends research includes a number of different reports and resources (note that individual resources are available to EDUCAUSE members only).

Issues, Technologies, and Trends — Oh My!

Collectively, the 2018 top trends and strategic technologies support the four major themes of the Top 10 IT Issues: institutional adaptiveness, improved student outcomes, improved decision-making, and IT adaptiveness. Table 1 maps the Top 10 IT Issues theme, individual IT issues, and the top trends and technologies to help leaders jump-start these conversations.

Table 1. Matrix of issues, trends, and technologies

Top 10 IT Issues Theme	IT Issues	Trends	Strategic Technologies
Institutional Adaptiveness Institutional and IT leaders are strengthening their individual and collective capacity not only for effective and efficient but also for consequential uses of technology.	3. Institution-wide IT strategy: Repositioning or reinforcing the role of IT leadership as an integral strategic partner of institutional leadership in achieving institutional missions 6. Higher education affordability: Balancing and rightsizing IT priorities and budget to support IT-enabled institutional efficiencies and innovations in the context of institutional funding realities 10. Change leadership: Helping institutional constituents (including the IT staff) adapt to the increasing pace of technology change	• Contributions of IT to institutional operational excellence • Business process redesign • IT as an agent of institutional transformation and innovation • Shared services
Improved Student Outcomes Work on student success initiatives has become both more tactical (with a nuts-and-bolts focus on integrations) and more aspirational (with a new emphasis on students' entire experience with the institution).	2. Student success: Managing the system implementations and integrations that support multiple student success initiatives 5. Student-centered institution: Understanding and advancing technology's role in defining the student experience on campus (from applicants to alumni)	• Student success focus/imperatives	2. Active learning classrooms 3. Incorporation of mobile devices in teaching and learning 6. Technologies for planning and mapping student educational plans 8. Predictive analytics for student success (institutional level) 10. Student success planning systems
Improved Decision-Making The data issue is every bit as complicated as has been predicted, and efforts to gather, manage, and use the data are advancing.	4. Data-enabled institutional culture: Using BI and analytics to inform the broad conversation and answer big questions 8. (tie) Data management and governance: Implementing effective institutional data governance practices 8. (tie) Digital integrations: Ensuring system interoperability, scalability, and extensibility, as well as data integrity, standards, and governance, across multiple applications and platforms	• Data-driven decision making • Institution-wide data management and integrations • Changing enterprise system architectures, integrations, and workflows	1. Uses of APIs 5. Technologies for improving analysis of student data 8. Predictive analytics for student success (institutional level)
IT Adaptiveness IT organizations are adapting themselves to new economic, demographic, and industry models and realities and are addressing the information security of the institution with even greater rigor.	1. Information security: Developing a risk-based security strategy that keeps pace with security threats and challenges 7. IT staffing and organizational models: Ensuring adequate staffing capacity and staff retention in the face of retirements, new sourcing models, growing external competition, rising salaries, and the demands of technology initiatives on both IT and non-IT staff	• Increasing complexity of technology, architecture, and data • Complexity of security threats • Compliance environment • Strategic relationships with vendors • Campus safety • Diversity, equity, and inclusion • Incorporating risk-management approaches into IT strategy and service delivery • Service management (ITSM, ITIL) • Managing mobility (of people, data, institutional resources)	4. Mobile apps for enterprise applications 7. Blended data center (on premises and cloud based) 9. Database encryption 10. IT asset management tools (e.g., CMDB)

 

The conversations that IT leaders have about these lists and what the implications are for their own IT strategy and practices are the secret ingredient that helps move institutional IT practices forward. Whether you use the lists to increase awareness of what other institutions might be doing, ground your own vision, or solidify your forward-facing roadmap, these resources can help.

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Joanna Lyn Grama is director of cybersecurity and IT GRC programs at EDUCAUSE.