April 9, 2024
During a recent interview, I was asked a question regarding what digital transformation means to higher education and more specifically McMaster University. It was a timely question given where we are with our McMaster IT Strategy and one that I enjoyed answering.
Enjoyed you may be thinking, why enjoyed?
For anyone who has read my blog, they will tell you that as much as I oversee the technological elements and IT infrastructure of one of only four Canadian Universities consistently ranked in the world’s top 100 (McMaster’s most recent global ranking is 77th), I am very much about engagement and personal interaction with individuals all across our institution.
Because people as much as technology is at the centre of our strategy, our Digital Moments are a crucial part of our ability to realize both individually and collectively the full digital promise outlined in our IT Strategic Vision.
So what are Digital Moments? Quite simply, they are the stories and insights we have gathered from the McMaster community sharing how they envision digital transformation impacting their world. In short, it is a practice of listening and learning and then delivering results and isn’t that what a University is all about?
For students, digital transformation means having streamlined and integrated education and administrative processes that empower them to have more time to learn. From a faculty standpoint, it means providing the tools to help them create a learning environment that both challenges students and helps them to achieve their highest potential. For researchers, it means access to the most effective computing environments to support their projects. To all of the important members of our community, it may mean something different. Being able to capture and incorporate the unique needs and objectives of everyone into a single, coherent strategy is ultimately the key to digital realization and success, and you do not gain these kinds of insights working in a vacuum. You need to connect with people all over the institution and talk and learn and understand.
We will be publishing a few of our community’s amazing Digital Moments to correspond with our McMaster IT Strategic Plan Official Launch on January 23rd, 2019. I invite you to visit our website throughout 2019 to chart our progress.
Long View Perspective
One of the most exciting aspects of working with Gayleen and her team at McMaster is the opportunity it affords us to be an important partner in McMaster’s digital transformation process. In conjunction with Cisco, our collective teams are moving towards the implementation of a strategy that will deliver amazing outcomes for the University and establish what I believe will be a digital standard for higher education institutions in Canada and perhaps beyond.
For this reason, I am pleased to announce that Gayleen will join Cisco President Rola Dagher on stage at Activate Digital 2019 in Mississauga on February 28th to provide more insights into how McMaster University is both embracing and realizing the full digital promise. As seating is limited, I would encourage you to register today. – Ivan Brinjak, Sales Director at Long View Systems