A recent Pew Research report finds 52 percent of Americans are more concerned than excited about the increased use of artificial intelligence in daily life, which brings up an important question—has your school done its due diligence when adopting new technologies and automations?
Modern industries are revolutionizing the way they do business through technology, and the education space is no different. Schools that use digital transformation better serve students, families, and their communities, making these schools more appealing for applicants.
Digital transformation in K-12 education offers schools operational improvements and updated technology, but buyers first need to understand how new platforms will solve common problems while improving student and family experiences.
This guide will help you understand the digital transformation trends in private K-12 education and how updating your processes can open new opportunities for your school. We’ll also guide you through the how-to’s of digital transformation implementation within your school.
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Table of Contents
- Chapter 1: Digital Transformation Defined
- Chapter 2: How Digital Transformation Can Help Your School
- Chapter 3: Streamlining the Admissions Process
- Chapter 4: Efficient Financial Aid Processes
- Chapter 5: Automating the Enrollment and Tuition Process
- Conclusion: Bring Your School Into the Future
Chapter 1: Digital Transformation Defined
As technology improves its capacity and function, many industries adopt more software to replace manual actions or upgrade from previous, outdated software. These switches aim to improve processes and better meet customer expectations at scale. The digital transformation process revolutionizes how different industries do business, making them more competitive and creating more loyal customers.
The education industry also benefits from digital transformation as it automates burdensome processes while improving student and family experiences. This section explains digital transformation and how it can benefit the education industry. We’ll also help you determine whether or not digital transformation is the right choice for your school.
What Is Digital Transformation?
K-12 digital transformation entails the process of implementing new and improved digital technology in schools and fundamentally changes how they operate when serving students and parents. Digital transformation aims to make processes more effective and efficient compared to older technologies, freeing up time and resources for administrators to expand their impact.
This requires a cultural shift within your school’s organization. If you update old practices with new technology, you’re simply digitizing, not transforming. You can only digitally transform your school by shifting your thinking about current processes, but it can take time to transform the mindset and culture within your school, especially if families, students, and staff are accustomed to outdated practices. You can encourage the cultural shift by fostering innovative ideas and reporting measurable improvements after implementing changes.
Digital transformation begins with three essential parts—a problem statement, an opportunity, and a smart goal. Each area helps make the business case for why your facility wants to transform its current technology. Technology adoption can target any individual within your school, including teachers, students, administration, or staff.
Current Trends in Digital Transformation
Exploring current trends in educational digital transformation can help convince your stakeholders of the benefits. Some digital transformation trends include the following:
- School management suites: Comprehensive solutions that include software for all school management functions, offering a streamlined experience.
- Registration: Admissions registration using a website or mobile application on families’ phones.
- Student Management platforms: Online student organization through streamlined platforms for coursework, projects, grades, and report cards.
- Interventions and progression: Tracking student progress through data and designing intervention programs to help find and reach out to struggling students.
- Online learning platforms: Options for students to attend class online via video conferencing and access interactive learning materials remotely.
- Online admission assessments: Online admission assessment options for students and parents, customized to each school’s preferences.
- Tracking and data: Using data to track students’ performance, trends, and progress throughout the year.
- AI implementation: Using AI to assist with assessments, analysis, and exam proctoring.
- Finances: Options for online payments, transactions, donations and financial aid, in addition to automations that partially relieve the administrative burden.
- AR and VR: Augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) increase classroom engagement, giving students unique experiences such as interacting with history using VR or making science safer with simulated experiments.
- Smart classrooms: Many schools have implemented smart classrooms and updated their in-class technology to use smart software for lesson planning and smartboards for easy teaching.
- Personalized learning: New technology tracks student learning styles and preferences to create lessons and classwork based on their personal needs.
- Accessible learning: Schools can reach students in different locations, offer better assistance to students with specific learning needs, and ensure students with disabilities have the technology needed to make learning easy.
- Data privacy: Using two-factor authentication, encryption, backups, and other data privacy software to secure essential information.
Technology has many applications in the educational industry, whether you’re streamlining the admissions process, tracking student progression, or looking for new methods to further learning. Using technology will also set you apart from other schools that haven’t transformed, boosting your enrollment efforts and student retention.
Is Digital Transformation Right for Your School?
If you’re wondering whether digital transformation is suitable for your school, consider how current processes run and the problem areas you notice. For example, some schools struggle with admissions due to manual, outdated practices, while competing schools offer families a modern, more enticing process. Technology can help schools find new approaches to applications, review decision letters quickly, and collect family and student data in one centralized platform.
Here are a few areas to consider when asking yourself whether digital transformation is right for your school.
1. Is Your School Fully Accessible?
Think about how accessible your school is to students with specific learning needs, those learning from home, or students who need technology to reach their potential. Digital transformation software, which can help you reach students worldwide and provide accessible learning tools to students with disabilities. Items like text-to-speech tablets, online applications for remote learning, AR, and VR can improve accessibility.
2. Does Your School Emphasize Personalized Learning?
Does your school use the same learning styles for every student, regardless of their specific requirements, or does it emphasize the personal learning needs of its students? Every student learns differently, and digital solutions can help track student progress, learning styles, and classroom needs. Teachers can provide each student with a personalized learning experience through new technology and processes to improve their academic success. Teacher collaboration with families is also key, so digital solutions that enhance two-way communication can have a vital impact on student engagement.
3. Does Your School Have Healthy Engagement?
Ask yourself how much students are engaged with the school’s learning material. Digital transformation can help improve engagement with students in the classroom. Students may be more excited to learn and find classwork interesting through tools like smart whiteboards, tablets, computers, chatbots, VR, and AI. Digital transformation also helps students engage with each other through tools like online chat rooms or shared learning software with accessible lesson plans.
Additionally, consider family engagement—how does your school communicate with families? Modern solutions that meet families on the platforms they use can send automatic communications via phone call, email, and portal messaging to ensure families stay up-to-date and encourage engagement with your school.
4. How Safe Is Personal Information?
How does your school store private information about parents and families? It may be time for digital transformation if you still stick to traditional paper processes for storing personal information and student data. Protecting students’ and teachers’ physical safety is also a priority. Some safety tools for improved physical safety also include CCTV systems, IP cameras, artificial intelligence, and Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled sensors.
5. Do You Need More Information and Data on Student Progress?
Is it hard for your school to track student progress or keep data on students updated? Focus on on how your school can make it easier to implement strategies for student intervention and tracking struggling children. For schools that require more student data and information, digital transformation can help. By transforming your data processes, schools can better pinpoint which students need extra academic assistance and track data on progress to ensure each student is prepared for graduation.
Chapter 2: How Digital Transformation Can Help Your School
Digital transformation can help your school perform more efficiently and provide the most effective experiences possible for students and families. An action plan is essential to effectively implement new technology in your school, so we’ll explore how to develop your digital adoption strategy.
Creating a Digital Transformation Strategy
Digital transformation is about more than replacing paper with software. It’s a complete overhaul of old processes for something better and more efficient. These new processes are not made perfect overnight, so if you commit to digital transformation for your school, you need a strategy to make the transition smooth and efficient.
The Key Elements of an Effective Strategy
Include the following key elements during digital transformation to ensure full implementation rather than simply digitizing outdated processes, or else you risk repeating similar inefficiencies online. Each staff member, teacher, or administrator needs to have an open digital mindset so you can truly make the changes you need to achieve your goals. Consider the following elements when creating your own digital transformation strategy.
1. Identify Your Problems and Goals
Before implementing new technology and processes, you must define the reasons for digital transformation. To do so, identify issues, determine business and/or classroom impact, and create goals so your team can make a data-driven case to decision-makers.
First, look for any problem areas within your school. For example, if you’re struggling with admissions, you’ll want to implement technology that streamlines processes and maximizes the number of applicants.
Second, determine the impact this adoption will have on school finances or student performance. When it’s time to present to the board, tools that quantifiably save money, attract more families to the school, or boost classroom engagement are much more likely to convince price-conscious leaders than vibes-based arguments.
Next, you’ll want to identify the goals you want to achieve. For example, you may want to improve communications between administrative staff to families, and you’ve found software that helps achieve this goal. Once identified, create a progressive series of metrics and milestones that will show increased family engagement and event participation, so you can properly gauge the success of adoption.
2. Prepare to Create Changes and Handle Resistance
Digital transformation requires an entire mindset shift, and some process-oriented people are bound to resist these changes at first. It will take time to transform the mindset and culture of every individual, especially if they feel more comfortable with older practices.
Ensure you’re fostering these cultural changes with the tools to handle resistance. Communicate your values with all team members, especially those who will use new technology in their day-to-day jobs. Encourage them to ask questions and provide them with resources to learn how to use new digital tools. The more you foster these cultural changes, the less resistance you’ll meet over time, and individuals will start to understand your vision for the school’s future.
3. Create a Technology Roadmap
Once you’ve established a foundation and solid strategy, you can implement new technology to achieve your goals and foster change within your school. With a vision in place, start by outlining what technology you plan to implement first, document processes and best practices, and understand what to do after achieving expected goals. The roadmap will help you keep track of your goals and plan for the next steps.
4. Choose the Right Technology and Partners
Digital transformation is not just buying technology, so make sure the relationship with your vendor matches the long-term plans of your school. Some technology won’t scale as your organization grows, and the partner you select may not be able to support you in the future. When you’re looking for technology for your digital transformation strategy, choose technology that you can use to achieve your short- and long-term goals.
You’ll also want to pick a partner with the right expertise and knowledge in your application to assist with any unexpected troubleshooting. Your chosen partner should help you be more efficient as an educational institution, driving results and committing to your goals.
5. Keep up Your Momentum
Once you start seeing results for your short-term goals, it’s time to continue with the momentum you’ve gained. You can begin to scale your transformation and accommodate larger, long-term goals. Your results may also shift the culture within your school in favor of future digital transformation for compounding benefits. More ways to digitally transform your school will emerge as time passes, allowing you to continue finding new opportunities to become an increasingly successful educational institution.
The Benefits of Digital Transformation in Education
If you’ve never used innovative technology in your school, you may be unaware of the benefits of digital transformation. Your educational institution can benefit from digital transformation in the following ways.
Go Paperless
Using digital technology removes paper from the equation, reducing the need to sort through filing cabinets with easy searchability. You’ll also reduce your carbon footprint by going paperless, making your campus more eco-friendly.
Instead of using paper for all coursework, student and applicant data, and information processes, your school can utilize software and educational platforms to house digital copies of tests, homework, projects, and student data in an accessible place. For example, digital software like Ravenna® Student Management make it easy for teachers to upload copies of homework, projects, and information under one roof.
Improve Data Analytics
Technology allows teachers and staff to easily track student information, making it effortless to determine how individual students are progressing through the curriculum. Data analytics may further assist with specific areas like tracking student progress and creating intervention plans. For example, students struggling in math may receive faster assistance from tutors and counselors once teachers have the knowledge and data to spot an issue. The more the administration understands about a student, the better they can help them succeed academically.
Save Time
Digital transformation saves time, allowing your teams to focus on achieving school goals and create the best student experiences. You can also help families save time by making applying and enrolling in your school easier.
An example of time-saving strategies through digital transformation is quick admissions and enrollment processes. When applications are easy to fill out online, families are more likely to complete the process, strengthening the applicant pool for that year. Another common example is the use of online platforms for handling homework and projects. When students can easily access homework online, it saves teachers from rooting through piles of paper.
Streamline Processes for Families
Families appreciate it when processes are simple and fast, such as enrollment, tuition payments, and communication with the school. With digital transformation, they can get tuition payment reminders, enroll multiple students at once, and easily communicate with your staff to ask questions.
Quick financial tasks are greatly appreciated by families who believe it is easier and faster to transfer money online than by bringing checks in person. With all their questions answered through a reliable web page or automated chat system, your school can also reduce the number of lengthy phone calls from confused parents.
Automate Tasks
Digital transformation allows you to automate tedious and time-consuming tasks, letting staff focus on other projects that contribute to your goals. Employees may spend hours manipulating Excel sheets when helpful software already exists to do that work for them. Automated systems can take control of scheduling, manual paperwork, data input, and other time-consuming tasks. With those hours now freed up, can you imagine the expanded impact of these employees?
Enhance Teaching Methods
If your school struggles to enhance its teaching methods and educational assistance platforms, consider using digital transformation to improve classroom techniques and teaching processes. Make the classroom more collaborative and interactive with tools like digital learning boards, online platforms with centralized folders for homework and instructional videos, AI tools, or VR options.
Chapter 3: Streamlining the Admissions Process
The admissions process is the first impression prospective families and students have of your school. Streamlining each step to improve the overall experience makes it easier to not only submit applications, but subsequently have your teams review them. Learn more about private school admissions solutions and how using technology can improve your admissions process.
The Disadvantages of a Traditional Admissions Process
Families’ and students’ expectations of school environments continue to evolve as facilities enter the digital world. Innovative digital practices are helping modern education institutions quickly leave behind those that continue to use outdated processes and techniques. Learning the disadvantages of traditional admissions processes can help schools pinpoint where to make updates that improve student learning experiences, increase retention rates, and expand recruitment reach.
Some disadvantages of traditional admissions processes include:
- Relying on students and families: The traditional admissions process relies on families and students reaching out to an institution primarily through word-of-mouth and creating a relationship with the admissions team. These teams would provide families and students with the information they need to enroll in the school. However, technology has shifted the admissions process, and prospective students and busy parents can easily find the information they need online.
- Time-consuming inquiries: Through digitization, families often start the admissions process without ever contacting the admission department. However, with a traditional process, your facility may receive a higher number of calls from parents with numerous questions, straining staff resources with extra time required to address these requests.
- Paper systems: If your school still uses traditional admissions processes and a paper system, families and prospective students could become frustrated with the inconvenience, and administrators must spend extra time reviewing, filing, and retrieving applications by hand.
- Implicit bias: Traditional admissions also leave room for implicit bias, which can affect decision-making. Implicit bias is when a person makes a judgment about another person based on unconscious stereotypes. Digitizing the admissions process can help prevent implicit bias from influencing the admissions process by introducing standardized processes and strengthening the objectivity of decision-making.
Using Technology to Improve Admissions
Private school digital transformation can help improve the admissions process experience for families and ease the burden on staff. The benefits of Ravenna software in the admissions process include the following:
- Centralizing the admissions process: Parents can easily apply from one account and apply for multiple students. Families can also submit forms, plan for events, and view admission decisions in one convenient location.
- Reducing paper usage: Traditional admission processes require an extensive paper trail of information, which often trades hands and can get misplaced or lost. Using technology allows you to securely keep important information in one place, reducing the risk of human error, and allowing convenient file access.
- Improving the interview process: Ravenna’s software allows interviewers to take control of their scheduling, removing back-and-forth when determining availability. The software can even assign applicants to certain interviewers based on interests and criteria to ensure a targeted, highly relevant experience.
- Using flexible configurations: You can configure the software to your unique needs. With Ravenna, you can customize forms, questions, events, and processes to create a personalized experience for potential students.
- Streamlining processing: Rather than spending too much time processing applications, the Ravenna software allows you to process admissions documents quickly, saving valuable time that can be redirected toward other key operations.
- Employing automation: Ravenna’s software uses automation tools to handle hard work, including application segmentation, flagging files, and executing recruitment campaigns. You’ll save more time using automation technology and improve the admissions process for administrative staff and students.
Chapter 4: Efficient Financial Aid Processes
Tuition is often a significant barrier to private school attendance, which can prevent families from applying to their chosen schools. Financial aid is a significant part of the admissions phase, as many families rely on aid to attend their desired school.
While many schools offer supplementary funds, they may rely on outdated processes that make it more challenging for families to access any needed assistance. However, digital transformation can make your financial aid process more efficient for your school and prospective students.
Managing the Increasing Demand for Financial Aid
As more people become aware of financial aid opportunities, the demand for financial assistance has increased. The Education Data Initiative notes more than 25 percent of private school students receive some form of aid from their schools, with those students receiving an average of around $21,000 per year.
Families can fill out forms from their desired institution to apply for assistance, but using a traditional process can make it challenging for teams to keep up with demand. Not using technology means parents or students may have to endure a long, tedious process to apply for aid at your institution.
If the process is decentralized, it creates complicated procedures for families and administration. Paperwork can get lost or misplaced, while deadlines get missed and calculations miss vital information, all requiring more time and effort from all involved individuals. Financial aid management software provides a solution for administration and families, reducing the risk of human error and drawn-out processes.
When it comes to the impact and challenges of digital transformation in education, schools providing a comprehensive digital experience not only make their teams more efficient, but also provide a competitive applicant experience for families.
Centralizing and Simplifying Financial Aid
School & Student Services (SSS) is a financial aid software that integrates with Ravenna, merging the operations of two financial aid solutions for greater efficiency and transparency. SSS processes applicants’ information in an unbiased manner, giving families assurance their applications will be processed fairly and objectively. All the data SSS collects integrates into Ravenna’s admission profiles, allowing admissions and enrollment staff to access everything needed in one convenient location. Using SSS alongside Ravenna’s software has many benefits for the financial aid process, including:
- Quick, comprehensive income verification: Schools using SSS gain full access to taxpayers’ financial data—with their consent—in a matter of minutes. That includes not just basic tax returns, but a full spectrum of financial indicators: income sources, business data, retirement accounts, and even real-time updates when new filings or changes are made.
- Fast application delivery: After families have submitted their applications, the system will create a detailed folder you can access within an hour, allowing your teams to process applications and reach decisions quicker.
- Streamlined application monitoring: The integrated system enables you to monitor an individual’s progress through the application process. You can use this information to reach out to individuals who didn’t complete their financial aid applications to warn of upcoming deadlines.
- Flexible configuration: These integrations with Ravenna and SSS allow your school to customize the configurations. You can customize application questions and document requirements to fit school needs.
- Applicant award tracking: You can centralize your award tracking using the SSS system, keeping track of applicant data and proposed or approved rewards in one location.
- Centralized experience: Families will appreciate the need for just one form, regardless of the number of children in the household, and they’ll have access to professional help and assistance throughout the process.
Chapter 5: Automating the Enrollment and Tuition Process
When working on a digital transformation strategy for your school and setting goals, consider how you can use technology to revolutionize your current processes and make enrollment and tuition seamless for administrative staff and families. This chapter details the benefits of using enrollment and tuition management software and how they can solve outdated processes.
Easier Enrollment for Everyone
Enrollment management refers to using strategies for enrollment decisions to help your school achieve headcount goals once families receive acceptance offers. Enrollment management often includes final financial aid award amounts, contract signings, and initial tuition deposit payments.
This is the final stage before students officially become members of your school. That’s why it’s essential to make the right impression with an online enrollment management system. Using digitized school enrollment software can help make the process easier for your school, families, and prospective students. The benefits of this software include:
- Faster enrollment processing: Enrollment comprises many aspects, including contract delivery and deposit collections. When you connect admissions and enrollment, it can help speed up the process. For example, when you move admitted students into Ravenna Enroll®, you can deliver agreements to families within seconds or send invoices to collect deposits online. You can also create customized contracts to suit your needs, whether you’re looking to collect essential data or add unique attachments.
- Reduced need for paper filing systems: Enrollment management functions allow you to stop using outdated paper-based systems where files can get lost or damaged. You also won’t have to spend time sorting through mountains of paperwork to find the necessary information. With Ravenna Student Management, the data is at your fingertips in one convenient place. An online system can also make enrollment easier for families since they won’t have to print out any paperwork and deliver it to your location. Instead, they simply complete the enrollment information online and send it electronically within seconds.
- Faster data collection: Digitized enrollment software uses automated tools to improve your enrollment process. Automation can collect data quickly and allows you to access any student’s data in one place at the click of a button. Faster data collection will also help you move through the enrollment process more quickly, allowing you to respond to families sooner with your decision letters.
Simplify Tuition Collection
Once contracts are signed and financial aid is applied, it comes time to collect initial tuition deposits to secure a student’s place at your school. The key features of online tuition management software include:
- Multiple payment options and flexible tuition agreements: Some families are willing to enroll their children at your institution but might need help covering immediate costs. Flexible payments software can allow families to make scheduled payments, depending on your school’s payment timeline. You can customize flexible tuition terms to accommodate different families’ needs while sustaining your school’s financial stability.
- Centralized accounts: Families benefit from a centralized account to manage their tuition payments in one location, regardless of the number of children they have enrolled. They won’t be required to make multiple accounts or provide identical information to make additional payments, saving time and effort while making it easier for your institution to collect tuition. The streamlined payment process will also be more straightforward for families who might operate on different pay schedules and tuition payment deadlines.
- Enhanced accuracy and efficiency: Automated software can help you collect tuition payments, deposits, and fees through a simple process. You’ll save valuable time and reduce the risk of errors that could slow tuition payments and cash flow. Software also allows you to create customized invoices, send payment reminders, and automatically apply awards or credits to families’ accounts. Automated reporting helps ensure your data and collections are accurate and up-to-date.
- Easy integrations: Transferring data manually during the primary admissions and enrollment season can be time-consuming. Automated software transfers essential data from enrollment to tuition for you, including financial aid awards, deposits, and remaining tuition amounts.
- Improved communications: Customize and automate communications with families, allowing your teams to easily send invoices and reminders to the correct accounts. You can customize your communications to reflect your institution’s mission and unique brand, personalizing contact with families and helping build strong relationships.
Ravenna allows your school to both exceed families’ expectations and streamline processes, improve workflows, reduce the risk of errors, and assist with expansion plans. Enrollment and tuition software should be a part of your digital transformation strategy to propel your school forward.
Bring Your School into the Future with Ravenna
Ravenna can help your school update outdated systems and processes, that can be frustrating to families and administrative staff. If your school relies on paper filing systems or traditional processes which make admissions, enrollment, and tuition practices challenging, consider partnering with Ravenna to streamline your operations. Digital transformation helps your school attract the best-fit families.
Transforming your current processes with this software can help your school in many ways, including centralizing your data, improving relationships with families, and enhancing your admissions and enrollment processes.
