Extension Engine
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Digital transformation is a long journey, one that we have helped several organizations navigate. The first steps are uncertain, the unknowns are many, but the potential payoff is large. Answers to the following questions can help you determine whether or not you’re ready to take those first steps. We run through these questions very early in the "getting to know you" stage with the project champion as a way for the potential client to learn how Extension Engine thinks about projects.

Schools are preparing to launch the Fall 2020 semester under a cloud of uncertainty over further COVID-related school closures. 13% of US higher ed institutions have announced that they will either be fully online (6%) or have proposed various hybrid models (7%). Students suffered through the hastily cobbled-together Zoom lectures when schools first closed but they will not want to continue college if the Fall semester was a repeat of the remote learning model of the second half of the Spring 2020 semester. 

The tragic killing of George Floyd and the events of the last few months have shone a spotlight on the disparate experiences of the Black community that have been marred by a culture of white supremacy and prejudiced systems and individuals. We know that these experiences are not new, and we know that change is long overdue. Now is the time for us to come together. Now is the time for us to speak up. Now is the time for action.

We work with many nonprofit organizations that are trying to move their value-delivery — that is, their training, courses, and workshops — online. In this article, I use such a framework to analyze the value that attendees get from face-to-face events and then discuss how these events might be moved online while simultaneously increasing their value by improving both the access to and the effectiveness of their training.

This last entry of the strategy series both highlights important points from the series and also lays out the decisions that must be made to carry out the strategy during and after the pandemic. I start by laying out the assumptions that I make about the reader, her organization, and the operating environment. Next, I highlight some important point about management of changing expectations.

Higher Education Strategy Series: This is the 15th and last entry of this series. This page describes the whole series and provides links to all of the articles.