As students demand greater flexibility and engagement from their educational journeys, institutions must innovate without compromising quality. Thoughtful integration of technology and a focus on fostering emotional and intellectual connections with content are key to achieving this balance. In this interview, Themis Kaniklidou discusses what today’s students expect of their institutions and how higher ed leaders can deliver on their expectations in the rapidly evolving digital environment.
The EvoLLLution (Evo): How do you see institutions adapting to meet students’ rising expectations, particularly when it comes to delivering the personalized, flexible learning experience everyone’s demanding today?
Themis Kaniklidou (TK): Students demand flexible, accessible and affordable learning that meets their life expectations. So, institutions have a very hard job to do, balancing the foundational values of education while looking ahead to deliver content-rich, quality education across populations. And these populations are not what they were before. We’re dealing with various ages, careers and life stages.
To meet their needs, institutions have to invest in customization paths. First, they need to understand their internal capabilities and invest time and resources to deliver flexible, quality education. E-learning is becoming increasingly popular for strategic reasons, enrollment and content delivery.
We can’t ignore content. We can push and stress processes and operations, but we also need valuable, up-to-date content that students can engage with. It makes those meaningful connections with the past while being relevant to their personal experiences. Higher ed moves very slowly, so integrating technology, investing in content, fostering strong partnerships and finding ways to deal with the digital divide will help us move forward.
Evo: What are some common challenges institutions face when it comes to the points you highlighted?
TK: The biggest challenge at an institution is getting all stakeholders inside an institution to understand that change is work in progress. There are other common challenges like declining enrollment and student debt, all of which have an impact on funding and financing resources. Change is often slow and goes unnoticed, but it can quickly have a significant impact.
To create meaningful pathways and personalized experiences, we have to move toward a mindset of education as a river rather than a bucket. Education is a journey that is constantly flowing. To keep it moving, we have to embrace technology and content, looking at our resources and seeing what we can do with them.
As institutions, we have a responsibility to deal with these challenges. We need to have the accountability toward peers and students to not adopt extreme practices and treat everything as black-and-white situations. We must be careful with how we balance what we offer and how we do it.
Evo: How can institutions foster deep connections between students and institutions, particularly in the hybrid environment?
TK: The modalities students need present a constant challenge. There are various work-life balances that students are dealing with, and they all have different behaviors. Engagement comes in three forms: cognitive, behavioral and affective. So, students need to understand and love content and knowledge. They need to develop interpersonal relationships with peers and faculty, and they need to exhibit emotional investment in what they are doing.
To properly help students develop deeper connections, institutions often invest in learning centers to support faculty in developing practices that foster student engagement—even in the hybrid environment. Engagement also doesn’t stop at graduation. So, as admin, we need to know the entire educational loop of student engagement and find ways to connect.
Evo: What role does lifelong learning play in supporting the modern learner, and what’s required of institutions to support learners at every stage of the journey?
TK: Lifelong learning is all about that river flowing, as I mentioned before. It means constantly wanting to learn and instilling a culture of lifelong learning among students that highlights the benefits learning can bring them for life. One way to do that is to think of stackable credentials, which bundle courses together and allow students to add a certificate to their degree. There’s enormous flexibility in that, as students are looking for help with their career outcomes. Such practices are meaningful examples of offering relevant lifelong learning experiences.
Evo: How important is the integration of digital tools in shaping the modern student experience, and what should higher ed should focus on to stay relevant?
TK: It’s hard to keep track of what’s happening, but before we go anywhere, we have to unpack what exactly we mean by modern learners and what they want. From there, we can invest in knowing the tools out there. There are learning platforms and various add-ons that can be integrated. We at Hellenic American University invest in people who stay on top of these practices and ensure we can stay ahead and focused on training faculty on how to use these tools.
With all these tools, we return to the necessity of that balancing act I keep referring to: balancing between innovating with these tools inside and outside the classroom without letting them take over. Then gamification is a whole other ball game and one worth looking into, but when it comes to these digital tools we first have to evaluate them and see how they can help our learners succeed.
Evo: What is some advice you would share with higher ed leaders looking to be adaptive and innovative in this space?
TK: It’s important to not only go for the low-hanging fruit, what’s imminent and gives us a quick and easy fix to a problem. Remain patient, thoughtful and adaptive to the technological complexities coming our way. This is a complex situation we’re in, and it’ll take time to navigate through it, understand the technology and adopt it into our processes. Our primal instinct is to find the quick and easily achievable solution, but we have to go against this trend and stay humble in this new era. Society is looking for innovative talents, and we’re lucky to be in an era that allows for innovation. We just need to cultivate innovation within our institutions in meaningful and ethical ways.
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