As a part of Fusemachines’ monthly Digitizing Education Webinar Series, we conducted our 2nd webinar session on November 11th which highlighted the best practices on how schools can build a digitization roadmap. The webinar covered a step-by-step guide on transforming a school’s digital infrastructure. Further, it explained the importance of mapping the students’ lifecycle journey to succeed in the post-pandemic world. Fuseclassroom’s Director of Product & Business Development Parag Shrestha, discussed the strategies schools can use to create an effective digitization roadmap and ways to overcome challenges schools can face throughout the process.
5 key steps in building a digitization roadmap
Building a digitization roadmap requires strategic and effective planning. It entails three phases: digitizing the classroom, digitizing the student lifecycle, and digitizing school operations. Building a framework helps schools articulate their goals and creates a student-centric structure.
We categorized the process of building the digitization roadmap into 5 steps:
-
Define your vision to digitize:
Think about your current physical infrastructure and envision a digital framework. Then, determine what you would want to be included in your school’s digital experience. Know your vision, objectives, and key results.
-
Assemble a team and create a project plan:
Create a versatile, holistic committee by budgeting and allocating resources effectively. Understand your overall digital curriculum and create a project step-by-step project plan to meet the end goal.
-
Select the right tools & platform:
It’s imperative to pick the right tools, platform, and tech partner to avoid costly disruptions and understand the benefits of each.
-
Implement training sessions & privacy policies:
Provide the staff and faculty members on how to best use the technology. Student and school records also need to be secured. Students, teachers, and parents should feel ensured that confidential data is protected.
-
Track, monitor and iterate:
Once your school is digitized, it’s important to track progress, improve on areas needed, and update accordingly to reach continuous success.
Click here to view our worksheet to help you start building your digitization plan!
Mapping the student lifecycle also establishes successful digitization. With a roadmap, schools can understand each step a student takes from enrolling into a school to graduating. As a result, it allows schools to have a clearer idea of a student’s journey and helps understand the challenges they face to better implement solutions. Ultimately, this leads to creating a successful student-centric experience. See our outline for mapping the student lifecycle journey here!
Webinar Q&A session
Webinar attendees were able to engage with Parag Shrestha through a Q&A session. Here’s a summary below:
Q: Do you have a school in Nepal using Fuse Classroom?
A: National and international schools and colleges use the Fuse Classroom platform. Some of the institutions who have onboarded with us in Nepal include Thames College, Samriddhi College, Swarnim School, Rosebud School and Boston International College. Our team is working on a SIS product and our SMS will be launched in about 6 months.
Q: Do these steps for digitizing school apply for rural schools in Nepal with very limited resources and technology?
A: The best practices for digitization can be applied to rural schools in Nepal if the two basic prerequisites of digitization are fulfilled: internet infrastructure and a device (computer or smartphone). However, some areas of Nepal lack radio, television access, or have stable internet connection. To provide schools in need the basic internet facilities, we have partnered with ISP to provide 50% discounts on the expenses.
In the same way, we recently did a non-cash credit grant program worth rupees 2.5 lakh to award schools in need and helped about 50 schools and 10,000 students. The grant is now closed but anyone who is still willing to apply, please reach out to us and we can consider.
I request all the stakeholders – educators, government, NGOs, INGOs, to help put this infrastructure in place so that tomorrow, digitization can happen.
Q: What kind of organization is Fusemachines and what sort of activities does it do to digitize school?
A: Fusemachines is an AI education and solutions provider company. We are headquartered in New York but we have main offices in Nepal, Canada and DR. With the mission to democratize AI and digitize schools efficiently, we have brought the Fuse Classroom. This is an AI-enabled education platform with smart AI features empowering both school administrators, instructors, and students.
Once you partner with us, our team will start the process with discovery sessions, and kick-off meetings. We have a versatile team including education success specialists, project managers, tech experts, customer success managers, and training managers. They will do need assessment and define your digitization goals. Following that, we slowly onboard all of the important stakeholders of the school and conduct regular training sessions. Throughout the digitization journey, we’ll be your close consultants and help you get the most out of the platform and the team.
Q: What are the key skills required in a team when digitizing?
A: It’s imperative to assemble a team that is versatile and holistic. Firstly, pick experts in management, administration, along with teacher representatives, education specialists, IT professionals, coordinators and student representatives. Everyone needs to constantly communicate and collaborate together to brainstorm and draft a project plan/framework that meets your digitization goal. Secondly, assign roles to each team member to increase accountability. Lastly, get a dedicated project manager who has leadership qualities to effectively track project progress and guide the team.
Post webinar survey results
The post-webinar survey highlighted the webinar was extremely helpful. The majority of the attendees were teachers and school administrators excited to learn about the step-by-step process of digitization. They are excited to join our future sessions. They want to gain more insight from Parag Shrestha regarding action research for digitization, digital classroom, AI-enabled LMS, and Fuse Classroom. One attendee expressed, “Five steps policy for digitization of school or university was the most important part I learned during the webinar.” Some attendees are looking forward to joining our future sessions and get more insights from Parag Shrestha. Mark your calendars for our next webinar that will cover how to transform and reimagine the classroom with blended learning on December 16, 2020 at 6 PM NPT.
Stay tuned!
