Reposting the UCalgary News post I wrote for our TI Newsletter:
Digital Transformation (Dx) in higher education has largely been framed as an organizational and IT challenge: enterprise systems, cloud migration, data governance, workforce development. That framing makes sense for the people leading those efforts, and the work is genuinely important. But it can leave a gap for those of us whose daily work is about teaching and learning. What does digital transformation look like when the starting point is pedagogy, not infrastructure?
EDUCAUSE draws a useful distinction between three things that often get conflated. Digitization is converting analogue to digital (scanning syllabi, recording lectures). Digitalization is using digital tools to change existing processes (moving a course into an LMS, accepting online submissions). Digital transformation is something deeper: coordinated shifts in culture, workforce, and technology that enable fundamentally new educational models.
By that definition, most of what happens in teaching and learning support is digitization or digitalization. We help instructors use tools. We move things online. We make existing processes more efficient. That’s valuable work, but it’s not transformation.
So what does Dx look like when it’s centred on teaching and learning? A few examples stand out.
Arizona State University spent years building faculty trust in adaptive courseware before scaling it across gateway courses. The results were significant: a 24% improvement in pass rates in introductory biology and a 90% reduction in dropouts. But the technology wasn’t the hard part. The hard part was redesigning courses around personalized learning pathways and convincing faculty to let go of the lecture. As their adaptive programme manager put it: “You can’t do this a little bit.”
Georgia State University used predictive analytics not as an IT project but as a lever for institutional transformation. They track 800 risk factors for 50,000 students daily, but the analytics only work because they hired dozens of advisers to act on the alerts. The six-year graduation rate went from 32% to over 54%, and achievement gaps across race and income were eliminated. Their framing is instructive: the goal was not to change the nature of the students but to change the nature of the institution.
In the UK, Jisc co-developed a digital transformation framework with nine sector bodies, including Advance HE and the Association for Learning Technology, that explicitly focuses on people and practices, not just processes and technology. They piloted it with 24 universities in 2024, producing case studies that connect infrastructure changes to pedagogical improvement.
Closer to home, eCampusOntario offers micro-credentials specifically for educators navigating Dx, and BCcampus recently defined 21 digital learning competencies organized into mindsets, skillsets, and toolsets. Both position faculty capacity as the foundation of transformation.
The common thread across all of these? The most successful teaching-and-learning Dx initiatives are not primarily about technology adoption. They involve pedagogical redesign, faculty development, and organizational culture change. Technology is necessary but not sufficient.
For those of us working in teaching and learning centres, this is both validating and challenging. It means the work we do (supporting course design, building faculty capacity, fostering communities of practice) is central to digital transformation, not peripheral to it. But it also means we need to ask ourselves where we’re digitizing when we could be transforming.
At UCalgary, these questions are live. The university has a Digital Transformation and Technology portfolio reporting to the President, and the Ahead of Tomorrow strategic plan includes an Academic Innovation Plan that addresses the teaching and learning dimensions of institutional change. The infrastructure side of Dx is well underway. The question is how deeply the teaching and learning side keeps pace.
The Taylor Institute is hosting the 2026 Conference on Postsecondary Learning and Teaching on exactly this topic: “From Disruption to Connection: Digital Transformation in Postsecondary Education.” The conference framing asks how digital transformation can move beyond disruption to become a force for connection, linking students, educators, communities, and knowledge. It asks what relational approaches to Dx might look like, and what skills, mindsets, and supports educators and students need to navigate technology-rich environments confidently and ethically.
Those are the right questions. And they’re questions that start with pedagogy, not infrastructure. Which is, I think, where the most interesting work is going to happen.