Queensland University of Technology invests in digital agility

Queensland University of Technology (QUT) has invested in a digital engagement platform to improve the learning experience for its students.

With the purposes of improving the university’s competitive advantage during a period of significant sector disruption, QUT named the need for digital agility as a key driver for co-designing the platform with Salesforce.

Speaking at Salesforce’s Education Summit 2022, Robina Xavier, deputy vice-chancellor and VP education and James Rail, manager, Digital Connections Program at QUT discussed the university’s digital transformation journey, and the impacts of the investment.

According to Xavier, “Now more than ever, individuals are leveraging technology to learn, work and connect, which sets new expectations when they interact with the university. What they do elsewhere they now expect to do with us.”

Xavier named flexibility in learning and study environments as a key demand from students, as tertiary education steps in line with the corporate world in accepting the future of work as hybrid.

“We need to respond to these demands, while being able to scale and extend capabilities rapidly in response to shifts in expectations,” she said.

QUT is looking to leverage an enterprise platform in order to tailor its interactions with some 53,000 students to suit each individual’s learning journey.

According to Rail, “We need to move away from working in isolation to working in common and consistent ways, leveraging a single platform that provides teams with the technology building blocks needed to unify the support and services they provide across key stages of the learning lifecycle.”

QUT has moved away from using multiple marketing software solutions to using Salesforce Marketing Cloud, since what Rail described as a “successful” pilot program last year.

“We will be specific in our communications to ensure that our prospective learners and alumni receive information that is relevant to them based on the knowledge we have gained from a better understanding of who they are, their learning history and their motivations,” he said.

Rail said that students can navigate an education marketplace in order to view their course options and learning goals. Site analytics will assist to recommend courses and microcredentials that are suitable to the student based on their personal interests and history.

“Depending on the study path, no longer will our learners need to click through and continuously enter data across multiple systems to enrol in their course of choice,” said Rail.

Rail believes that QUT’s other investments in online learning with be strengthened as a result of the streamlined platform.

“Our change journey is a continuum. Through our digital engagement platform, we can move forward with the confidence that we have reusable, scalable and configurable solution components in place to enable adaption and flexibility.”