Higher Education: Respond, Recover & Re-Imagine du...

RobJonkers · ‎04-22-2020

SAP FOR HIGHER EDUCATION & RESEARCH:

HELPING INSTITUTIONS TO RESPOND, RECOVER AND RE-IMAGINE THE FUTURE OF EDUCATION

In just a couple of weeks the COVID-19 pandemic has escalated to a global health crisis and has extensively disrupted (Higher) Education & Research. Worldwide education institutions, from small K12 schools to large university systems are experiencing major challenges in dealing with closed campus facilities, and a resulting major impact in the ability to deliver the highest level of teaching, or research execution.

Globally, most education campuses are now closed which affects an astonishing 1.5BN students, or approximately 20% of the world’s population, and their families. Many institutions globally were forced to transform into 100% digital learning providers in a matter of days. However, not all institutions, or educators, find themselves well prepared to move to an online operating model, from a technical, pedagogical and organizational standpoint.

Picture: deep impact on (higher) education & research (sources shared at end of blog:*).

Institutions are now making the most out of their existing academic LMS solutions and further leveraging video conferencing solutions to support their online learning environments. Yet, the institutions are increasingly faced with new dimensional challenges to ensure adequate student interaction, engagement and success.

In other words, following the initial response (i.e. pivot to remote teaching, learning, and working) institutions must now embrace a second stage to initiate programs to recover some semblance of normalcy. There will then be a later, third stage, where these institutions and SAP customers across every industry, will be looking at the long-term need to “re-imagine” their business in the “post-COVID-19” world. This stage may bring opportunity, but also risk.

Officials are asking whether we are we now facing a “new normal” in education? I believe so. Now that so much content and learning has forced online, there is no putting the toothpaste back in the tube. Hence, institutions need to prepare themselves for a post-COVID-19 reality. Strategies need to be revisited to transform the institution into digital & remote learning powerhouses, utilizing digital technology to better support students and with this providing opportunities to reach even more, and more diverse, learners than ever on-campus.

Recently I have been increasingly asked by collegians, partners and customers, how SAP can support as the Higher Ed community Respond, start to Recover, and as they begin to Re-Imagine living and working differently.

With the following overview, I have laid out a set of capabilities where I believe SAP can assist and support in enriching the digital learning experiences for students and better support staff in their teaching and operational challenges. This renewed focus will support a new digital way of working, with solutions that can be implemented quickly (“Respond”) or in relatively short period of time (“Recover”) and to “Re-Imagine” institutions post-COVID-19 future.

Finally, and on a personal note: I have been closely monitoring social media, especially where it focuses on education and the COVID-19 impact. The education industry has many challenges to overcome, and the institutions, and their students, are still facing many obstacles in the coming weeks and months. In the face of these tremendous challenges, I offer a “Shout Out!” I have witnessed the education community and the amazing teaching staff, in fact, thrive through this pandemic, displaying remarkable resilience. As a fellow education colleague, I am both proud and humbled!

Please reach out if you have any questions.

Kind regards - Rob
SAP Higher Education & Research – Customer Advisory.

Stay healthy, stay safe!
“In 1665, Cambridge University closed because of the plague. Isaac Newton decided to work from home. He discovered calculus and the laws of motion.”

With special thanks to James Krouse from Industry Marketing for his top-notch editor skills!

12 WAYS SAP CAN HELP NOW OR IN (NEAR) FUTURE

Below more details on where SAP can help to RESPOND, RECOVER & RE-IMAGINE:

1. SAP Student Activity Hub to drive Student Engagement & Success

Effort to Adopt: MEDIUM to HIGH

Type of Support: RE-IMAGINE

Key Stakeholders: Student Success Director, CIO, Provost, Head Institutional Research, Deans, Students etc

Challenge:
The focus of education institutions in response to COVID-19 is on implementing and adapt digital and remote learning. However, what about tracking student progress, engagement and motivation which is currently falling through the cracks? This will be critical to help students complete their course work and eventually successfully graduate.

Pathway:
In the light of the COVID-19 situation institutions are moving more rapidly than ever to online learning tools and methods. In this new online learning reality, it is vital that there is continued insight into student engagement, activity and performance.

With SAP Student Activity Hub (based on HANA) universities can bring together key relevant data sources (incl SIS, LMS, etc data) to get accurate insight on their student population and intervene in time and in the moment to ensure the (remote studying) student is kept on track. SAP Student Activity Hub can also help monitor LMS adoption and to improve the overall quality of the online learning content.

More info:

SAP Student Activity Hub - Solution brief

SAP Student Activity Hub - e-Book

Picture: SAP Student Activity Hub – Student Group Management

2. SAP Qualtrics to Improve the Student Digital Learning Experiences

Effort to Adopt: LOW

Type of Support: RESPOND & RECOVER

Key Stakeholders: Provost, Deans, Registrar, Student Success Directors, Students etc

Challenge:
As education institutions massively shift to digital and remote learning it is a huge challenge to stay connected with teaching staff and students. Staying connected in these times with all students and acting quickly on their remote learning experiences and feedback is mission critical.

Pathway:
Qualtrics is a cloud platform for student engagement, classroom research, experimental design, and campus insights. Qualtrics can help institutions improve student experience and engagement. Especially now in the current COVID-19 crisis it is critical that faculties, professors, assistants stay in close contact with their students and use Qualtrics to get insights in the student well-being, behavior, health etc.

By continuing to stay engaged with remote students and teaching staff the experiences can be directly used to improve the online instruction capabilities and with that the overall student remote learning experience.

By closing the loop with students on concerns and well-being questions institutions can built trust and better engaged students in the context of support their online education and making them successful despite the lack of a classroom and physical campus.

More info: Qualtrics - Product page

Picture: Qualtrics Experience Insights

FREE COVID-19 OFFERING QUALTRICS:
SAP is providing Qualtrics ‘Remote Educator Pulse’* to help institutions who are rolling out remote learning, understand the critical issues arising with delivering education online and to stay tuned-in with student’s sentiment and understand what improvements can be made to ensure teaching and learning success.

To support institutions SAP Qualtrics have created three Free Remote Pulse offerings:

Remote Educator Pulse

K-12 Remote Learning Pulse

Higher Education Remote Learning Pulse

More info:

Qualtrics Remote Pulse Webpage

Qualtrics (Higher) Education Remote Pulse Blog

Picture: Qualtrics Remote Pulse for Higher Education

Picture: Qualtrics Core XM – Pre-defined Remote Pulse Projects

Picture: Qualtrics Remote Pulse example for K12

3. SAP Signature Management to Digitize University Operations

Effort to Adopt: LOW

Type of Support: RE-IMAGINE

Key Stakeholders: CIO, CFO, CHRO, Provost, Deans, Registrar, Students etc

Challenge:
Education institutions have large back-office operations that effectively ‘run the institution’, from finance, to human resources to procurement. With working remotely the in-person interaction is suddenly gone which is creating delays and slowing down business processes, research project progress, etc.

Pathway:
Digitizing teaching & learning is an absolutely necessity in this COVID-19 crisis, however institutions should not neglect the back-office. Modernizing university operations is critical to ‘run the university’ so that campus workforce can rely on solutions that supports business continuity.

SAP Signature Management by DocuSign is a great example where institutions can transform their business with providing solutions to run digitally anytime, anywhere on any device, in a manner that is secure, legal, and easy to use. SAP Signature Management works with existing forms and documents, conforms to existing workflows and approval processes, and integrates with back-end systems like S/4HANA, Ariba, SuccessFactors.

More info:

SAP Signature Management - Product webpage

SAP Signature Management - Video

Picture: SAP Signature Management

Picture: SAP Signature Management use cases in Higher Ed

4. SAP Jam for Student & Teaching Staff Social Collaboration

Effort to Adopt: LOW

Type of Support: RESPOND & RECOVER

Key Stakeholders: CIO, Provost, Deans, Registrar, Students, Teaching staff, etc

Challenge:
While in-person social distancing is the current new-normal people are increasingly using the familiar social media channels as alternative to express, interact, share etc. But what about doing this in the context of teaching & learning? On-campus interaction is not possible at the moment and once the professor closes their video conference tool what happens next? How to stay engaged with each other in the context of a course, discussion or learning topic etc?

Pathway:
By enabling students and teaching staff with a mobile enabled social collaboration tool in the context of their learning activities universities can drive student engagement beyond the remote online ‘class hours’. By providing students and staff a ‘university controlled and managed Facebook’ institutions can support and enrich the online learning with anytime-anywhere social learning activities and boost student engagement and success.

More info: SAP Jam Product web page

Picture: SAP Jam – an 'enterprise grade' social collaboration tool for all campus stakeholders.

5. SAP Assessment Management to Digitally Assess Students

Effort to Adopt: LOW to MEDIUM

Type of Support: RECOVER & RE-IMAGINE

Key Stakeholders: CIO, Provost, Deans, Registrar, Teaching staff, Students etc

Challenge:
Once physical lectures and classroom work is replaced by digital and remote learning the next challenge arises how to assess the gained knowledge and to provide remote digital exams that have the highest degree of validity, is secure and trustworthy?

Pathway:
SAP Assessment Management, powered by Questionmark OnDemand, is an enterprise-grade online assessment platform. With Questionmark OnDemand the actual learning outcomes are captured by providing the capability to test students on their achieved knowledge in an online and remote matter.

Especially in the current COVID-19 situation where universities are not able to organize on-campus (paper) examination moments they will need to start looking into these online alternatives. Also, to not jeopardize the progress of students in their study (which can be a costly thing in the current environment of high tuition fee costs!) the solution can provide the university with continuity of education ‘business’ and student progress in their student lifecycle.

More info:

SAP Assessment Management - Product page

Questionmark OnDemand - Product page

Free Questionmark offering for remote workers in the context of cybersecurity

Picture: QuestionMark OnDemand – Assessments

6. SAP Enable Now facilitates the creation of Digital Learning Content

Effort to Adopt: LOW

Type of Support: RESPOND & RECOVER

Key Stakeholders: CIO, IT, Provost, Deans, Registrar, etc

Challenge:
Digital and remote learning is completely different in many aspects than traditional classroom. These differences can present new challenges to staff and students. Digital content is a key aspect of online learning and insufficient quality course content can be a huge contributing factor to poorly developed digital and remote learning experiences (and not to forget the motivational aspect).

Pathway:
The SAP Enable now solution can support education institutions to easily and natively create digital learning materials. By creating online courses, digital learning content, institutions can provide a digital knowledge portal for explorative learning delivered via tablets, smartphones, and other devices so learning can take place anywhere – also in times of closed campuses.

SAP Enable Now can also be utilized to rapidly create and deploy learning content to the campus workforce which now became very relevant in the situation of having the entire campus workforce working remotely. High quality and contextual digital learning will result in improved productivity with competent and confident campus staff.

More info:

SAP Enable Now - Product page

SAP Enable Now - YouTube Video

Picture: SAP Enable Now – Create rapid online learning content

7. SAP Analytics Cloud to Enable the Data-Driven University

Effort to Adopt: LOW to MEDIUM

Type of Support: RESPOND & RE-IMAGINE

Key Stakeholders: Student Success Director, CIO, Provost, Head Institutional Research, Deans, etc

Challenge:
With an abundance of student and learning data, including now in-mass coming in from LMS systems it is more critical than ever to utilize and streamline the relevant data via easy-to-use business intelligence tools. There is a clear need to visualize key student & learning data to enable for example academic advisors with actionable insights to ensure personalized and just-in-time support for (struggling) students.

Pathway:
SAP Analytics Cloud's business intelligence and augmented analytics capabilities can help education institutions to help evaluate and predict student success and engagement. In a combination with SAP Student Activity Hub institutions now can tap into single-source-of-truth campus student & learning data and use the insights to intervene in individual cases where (remote) students need support.

SAP is providing standard content for the Higher Education & Research industry that can be utilized as implementation accelerator reducing go-live times.

More info:

SAP Analytics Cloud - Product page

SAP Analytics Cloud - Industry Business Content Packages

Picture: SAP Analytics Cloud – Higher Ed & Research standard content example

FREE COVID-19 OFFERING SAP ANALYTICS CLOUD FOR HIGHER EDUCATION:
Students can create an academic account for free. Students can use SAP Analytics Cloud to analyze data and for example collaborate on data sets for their study work or utilize the tool being part of a research project and the need to synthesize data, etc.

More info: SAP Analytics Cloud for Higher Education – Website

Picture: SAP Analytics Cloud for Higher Education

8.SAP Litmos as Online Education Platform for Academic Staff

Effort to Adopt: LOW

Type of Support: RESPOND & RE-IMAGINE

Key Stakeholders: CHRO, CFO, CIO, Provost, Teaching Staff etc

Challenge:
With having institution staff suddenly need to work remotely there will be challenges in the adoption of this new reality. Educating your staff to guide them through these crisis times is critical to keep them engaged and motivated. To address this challenge effectively it is vital to provide easy to consume e-learning content and reach 20th century staff on their terms: remote, online and on any-device.

Pathway:
SAP Litmos is in its essence a corporate learning LMS providing content-rich course learning catalogs that enables staff to easy access and consume entire learning programs in an online manner. Despite the corporate focus there might be a fit for smaller education institutes for training their students and at the same time using Litmos to train staff. Currently both very relevant in situations where entire campuses being closed to further notice.

SAP Litmos LMS is ideal for remote training and development especially there it combines virtual training/e-learning, social and mobile learning, in a secure and intuitive (mobile enabled) cloud platform.

More info:

SAP Litmos - Product page

SAP Litmos on YouTube

FREE COVID-19 OFFERING LITMOS: Remote Readiness & Productivity Academy:
To help support institutions that are having to work remotely, SAP Litmos is offering a completely free Remote Readiness & Effectivity Academy, with training content (e.g. on remote work, hygiene etc) for anyone, anytime, anywhere. The ready-to-watch video-based courses are designed to help establish best practices for remote work, maintain the highest levels of hygiene and mental wellness for workers, and develop leadership during times of change and challenge.

Picture: SAP Litmos LMS enabling learning on any-device

9. SAP Concur ‘Duty of Care’ for Safeguarding Student & Staff

Effort to Adopt: LOW to MEDIUM

Type of Support: RESPOND & RE-IMAGINE

Key Stakeholders: CHRO, CFO, CIO, Provost, etc

Challenge:
Knowing where you staff, and students are in times of crisis is always a priority. To ensure institutions can act quickly in-the-moment when a crisis occurs, they need to be able to monitor employee locations and provide 24/7 support in an emergency.

Pathway:
SAP Concur is widely adopted within education to support the frequent travel & expense activities of campus staff. Beside the rich travel & expenses functionalities Concur has a key feature in scope that is very relevant in the current COVID-19 crisis. This feature is the so called ‘Duty of Care. Duty of Care is an organization’s legal obligation to protect staff, students from harm. For instance, when academic staff is traveling for work or students that go abroad for field work or an exchange study, it’s critical that the university takes all reasonable measures to ensure that people remain safe!

More info:

SAP Concur Higher Education - Product page

SAP Concur - Duty of Care

Picture: SAP Concur – Duty of Care

10. SAP Ruum to support Institution Teamwork and Project Progress

Effort to Adopt: LOW

Type of Support: RESPOND & RE-IMAGINE

Key Stakeholders: CHRO, CFO, CIO, Provost, etc

Challenge:
In times where project institution teams are forced to continue their projects in a virtual and digital manner it is challenging to change overnight from face-2-face collaboration to fully digital.
Mails and Excel will not keep a project on track and will not provide collaborative insights on milestones, timelines, tasks etc. Hence there is a need to streamline this to ensure projects are delivered in time and budget.

Pathway:
SAP Ruum can support university teams ensuring continuation of their key campus projects by providing a digital lightweight project management workspace available in the cloud.

By using the lightweight, AI-enabled project management workspace to automate follow-ups and check-ins and provide daily online updates on deadlines and critical changes – enabling the remote university teams and workers to deliver successful projects also in times of COVID-19 crisis.

FREE COVID-19 OFFERING SAP RUUM:
SAP Ruum is there to support education institutions and enabling them to run their day-to-day operations and, therefore, SAP have created two, free templates on Ruum that outline an interactive checklist for managing the risks of COVID-19. These custom templates were built as a solution for teams and individuals who want to have a plan in place, but do not necessarily have the time or resources to build one from scratch.

SAP has created two, free COVID-19 planning checklist templates for Ruum users: Checklist for Employers and a Checklist for Individuals & Families.

More info:

SAP Ruum - Product page

SAP Ruum on YouTube - ‘Get started with Ruum’

Picture: SAP Ruum & the COVID-19 templates.

11. Ariba Discovery to Support the University Supply Chain

Effort to Adopt: LOW

Type of Support: RESPOND & RE-IMAGINE

Key Stakeholders: CHRO, CFO, CIO, Head of Procurement, Provost, etc

Challenge:
In today’s situation where the COVID-19 pandemic is not only heavily affecting education but also many other industries, sectors etc it is vital to ensure that the institution can continue to run its daily operations. Especially in cases where key research projects (key research facilities often are still open) are conducted it is vital to continue the ‘supply chain’ of critical (lab and research) equipment.

Pathway:
SAP Ariba Discovery is a cloud-based supplier network with automated and intelligent buyer-supplier matching tools to connect with high-quality product and service suppliers. The Ariba network is the largest globally with more than 4.6 million organizations that are there to be connected into to support the university supply chain.

FREE COVID-19 OFFERING SAP ARIBA DISCOVERY:
SAP Ariba Discovery helps you bring the right partners to the table to give you more options as you face today’s challenges and COVID-19 driven disruptions. Access to SAP Ariba Discovery will help buyers and suppliers connect quickly and effectively, and minimize disruption caused by shipment delays, capacity issues and increased consumer demand in times of crisis.

More info:

SAP Ariba Discovery - Product page

SAP Ariba Discovery – Free offering (Sourcing)

Picture: Ariba Discovery – Next-Gen Sourcing and Supplying

Picture: SAP Ariba Discovery COVID-19 offering

12. SAP’s New Digital Learning Initiative to All

Effort to Adopt: LOW

Type of Support: RESPOND & RE-IMAGINE

Key Stakeholders: ALL

Challenge:
To ensure education is not take a back seat during this time. Students and subject-matter experts need access to publicly available, enterprise grade, online learning environments to continue their education virtually. It is critical that education, for all, can continue and hence this needs to be facilitated by broadening access to digital learning offerings to ensure the continuity of innovation and enablement.

Pathway:
SAP’s ‘New Digital Learning Initiative to All’ is a dynamic initiative based on three educational pillars:

massive open online courses (MOOCs)

learning journeys for universities

and the SAP Young Thinkers program – as part of SAP’s comprehensive learning and enablement program.

All of the offerings are accessible through the openSAP platform, SAP’s MOOC.

Open.SAP.com is providing open online courses to the public with a focus on SAP portfolio, technologies, trends etc. Courses can be followed anytime, anywhere and on any device, so ideal for remote campus staff and students!

Beside specific SAP focused courses the below specific URL points to a course in ‘Snap’, Snap is an easy-to-use/easy-to-learn programming language and is an extended re-implementation of Scratch (Scratch is targeted primarily at children. The service is developed by MIT. Snap can be a great basis for conducting creative activities for children that are currently at home, the course on open.sap.com provides all the tools needed to teach the art of coding.

More info: