Africa faces a significant digital divide that urgently calls for action from many stakeholders, not least of all forward-thinking software companies like Learning Curve, which delivers innovative initiatives tailored to the continent’s unique challenges.
As the only Adobe Platinum Partner in Sub-Saharan Africa and the only Adobe Education Elite partner, Learning Curve has heeded the call to implement new digital technologies in its home market, South Africa.
As a testament to how much it values partnerships and associations, Learning Curve has forged a lasting relationship with the consortium Higher Education Information Technology South Africa (HEITSA), which started just over 16 years ago.
HEITSA’s vision is to collectively lead the application of digital capabilities to transform higher education in South Africa. It was, therefore, no surprise that consortia worked hand in glove with Learning Curve to negotiate special licensing programs for its members.
Today, the two organisations’ consolidated framework agreement has over 100 members, which has resulted in significant cost savings and a massive digital footprint for future Adobe users, and it caters to students from the beginning of their schooling career until graduation.
Learning Curve has also helped digitise many processes using Adobe’s business tools, from collaboration on documents and assessments to on-screen marking and document security, and reduced paper handling with Adobe Acrobat and Adobe Sign.
Crossing Boundaries into the Rest of Africa
Over the last year, Learning Curve has spread its reach and has been working closely with the Association of African Universities (AAU), whose mission is to enhance the quality and relevance of higher education in Africa and strengthen its contribution to Africa’s development.
After key Learning Curve staff attended the AAU’s Rectors Conference in Namibia in 2023 and its ICT Conference in Ghana in 2024, it became apparent that in order to better understand the greater African market, Learning Curve would have to carry out some important fact-finding.
Enter the Digital Readiness Assessment
To aid its research efforts, Learning Curve launched a digital readiness assessment process, which is a software-focused evaluation process designed to pinpoint inefficiencies and gaps in an organisation’s software infrastructure and practices. This proprietary process, unique to Learning Curve provides actionable insights and recommendations to streamline operations, improve security, and effectively integrate modern digital tools to create a more efficient, collaborative, and secure educational environment. To be clear, it does not focus on hardware.
What Does it Look Like in Practice?
A digital readiness assessment involves a comprehensive interview between senior information technology staff at an organisation, and members of the Learning Curve team. The process aims to identify areas of improvement in key digital pillars like digital document solutions, workflow processes, collaboration tools, future skills development, and data security to facilitate a transition toward a more advanced and integrated digital environment.
The main aim is to identify any gaps or inefficiencies that can be improved with modern digital solutions. This assessment evaluates how the institution manages its documents, handles administrative processes, and utilises digital tools for collaboration and data storage.
Key Operational Pillars
The assessment concentrates on selected areas, known as pillars.
Digital document solutions:
This pillar aims to uncover disjointed and outdated practices in how schools handle documents. It will also determine what can be improved with the storage, retrieval, and accessibility of both digital and physical files. The pillar aims to make recommendations to implement a unified system, streamline document processes, reduce reliance on paper, and enhance overall efficiency.
Workflow automation:
This pillar aims to identify time-consuming and error-prone manual processes such as admissions, form handling, and approvals. Successful recommendations will lead to adopting automated solutions, speed up administrative workflows, reduce errors, and free up staff to focus on higher-value tasks.
Digital collaboration:
This pillar seeks to uncover the need for integrated tools for real-time communication and teamwork among faculty and students so it can determine what is wrong with the existing fragmented collaboration methods. It recommends integrating advanced digital platforms, fostering better teamwork, enhancing the learning experience, and improving overall productivity.
Future skills development:
This pillar focuses on equipping students with the essential skills required for future job markets, emphasising creativity, problem-solving, and proficiency with advanced technologies such as generative AI. The goal is to assess and enhance the curriculum to ensure students are well-versed in the latest industry-standard creative software.
Data security:
Many educational institutions can improve how they protect sensitive information. This process helps determine what is sub-optimal with current practices in data storage, access control, and protection against breaches.
Goals for Tertiary Educational Organisations:
What’s in it for the colleges and universities that go through this process? The digital assessment aims to achieve several key outcomes:
Improved operational efficiency:
By streamlining digital document solutions and automating workflows, institutions can reduce administrative overhead, speed up processes, and improve the efficiency of their operations.
Enhanced collaboration:
Advanced digital tools can facilitate better communication and collaboration among faculty, staff, and students, leading to a more productive and engaged educational community.
Increased security and compliance:
Implementing robust digital security measures helps protect sensitive data, ensure compliance with data protection laws, and safeguard the institution’s digital assets.
Future-ready infrastructure:
By adopting modern digital solutions, institutions can build a resilient and adaptable digital infrastructure that supports future growth and innovation, ensuring they remain competitive in a rapidly evolving educational landscape.
Typical Findings
What are some real examples of findings a digital readiness assessment can uncover? Typical outcomes include finding out that a college or university relies heavily on outdated manual processes, fragmented digital document solutions, and lack of integrated collaboration tools. This is often not hard to spot, but through a coordinated process, institutions come to realise the extent and the scope of any fragmentation.
Tangible follow-ups from these findings could include investing in unified applications to centralise digital document solutions, automating workflow for admissions and financial transactions, and implementing advanced digital collaboration platforms. What’s more, Learning Curve is always on hand with a robust set of tools to address each of these challenges.
How Does Learning Curve Help Address Any Findings?
As an Adobe Platinum Reseller, Learning Curve can recommend and deploy Adobe tools tailored to educational institutions’ specific needs. For example, suppose the digital assessment reveals inefficient digital document solutions. In that case, Learning Curve could recommend Adobe Acrobat for creating a unified digital document solutions system that streamlines document creation, editing, and storage.
When manual processes are identified as a bottleneck, tools like Adobe Acrobat Sign are recommended to automate workflows such as document signing and approvals, speeding up administrative tasks and reducing errors. To address gaps in digital collaboration, Adobe Creative Cloud provides a suite of tools that enable real-time collaboration on projects, fostering a more interactive and productive environment for students and staff.
After conducting a digital readiness assessment with Great Zimbabwe University, IT Director Daniel Govo reports: “The detailed assessment report highlighted areas where we can enhance efficiencies. The insights shared have given us a fresh perspective… we have scheduled an internal stakeholder meeting to discuss the recommendations outlined in the report and approve the next steps.”
The Bottom Line
Powered by experts at Learning Curve, digital readiness assessments have become vital for any educational institution in greater Africa looking to thrive in today’s fast-paced, technology-driven landscape. Progressive African institutions can gain critical insights into their operational inefficiencies and vulnerabilities by closely evaluating and identifying gaps in digital document solutions, workflow automation, digital collaboration, future skills development, data security, and digital literacy. This helps meet the evolving needs of students and educators in the digital age.