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Future outlook for the NWU

These are the developments that may affect our future performance:

An unstable environment

• Short-term expectations

The lessons learned from Covid-19, as well as our digital business strategy and the improvement plans resulting from the national PhD review, will inform our processes and priorities for 2021.

The provision of data to students is a priority, as is finding ways to ensure that all students have access to a device.

Our financial risk mitigation strategy will be carefully implemented going forward.

• Medium-term expectations

We need to continually learn and update our skills in order to stay relevant. Work in the digital economy will, not surprisingly, consist increasingly of knowledge work. More jobs will require substantial interaction with technology, shaped by technological disruption, labour automation and more flexible and fluid employment.

The outdated industrial-age mind-set where people received an education early in life to be ready for a lifetime of work no longer reflects the individualised and unexpected trajectories of modern careers.

The idea of lifelong learning is nothing new. But in a world that has become much more non-linear, the conditions for lifelong learning have changed significantly since the concept was first introduced.

The need for lifelong learning to enable individuals to access learning opportunities – in different ways, for different purposes and at various career stages – has never been greater. We need to build education models that reflect this change and a culture that promotes it.

• Long-term expectations

The long-term financial sustainability of the university is paramount if the NWU is to remain a value-creating asset for future generations.

Using opportunities and addressing challenges and uncertainties

It will always be important to measure the applicability of technology against a set of explicitly determined and agreed-upon criteria concerning the university's core business.

Questions such as the following continue to guide our thinking about the future: Does the technology enable better operational support and offer a congenial human experience (given our focus on diversity, inclusion and access for success)? Does technology optimise our functioning in teaching and learning that enables student feedback which is more focused, nuanced and enabling of improvement (when it comes to e-assessment, for example)?

ICT innovation will play an increasingly important role in the offering of teaching and learning and support throughout the student life cycle and agile systems are required with seamless integration between the various stages of the student life cycle.

Our most important targets and plans for the future

• In the short to medium term

Lessons from Covid-19 and the work of the 21-Futures Task team that the NWU has appointed, will guide us to improved blended teaching and learning approaches.

These will provide students with the opportunity to benefit from the flexibility and innovation that online learning platforms provide, complemented by well-structured face-to-face sessions.

This reconfiguration of service delivery methods will also have implications for our different infrastructure and student support services. Strategic success factors are: (i) to provide cutting-edge and relevant resources and services to fulfil academic expectations and (ii) to create an enabling and value-based, transparent and engaged organisational culture.

The plans directly aimed at meeting these strategic success factors are:

• Provide collaborative teaching and learning support and professional development opportunities towards the scholarly development of academics as university teachers to enhance student retention, success and throughput.
• Collaboration between the Unit for Open Distance Learning (UODL) and the Centre for Teaching and Learning (CTL), to narrow the gap between asynchronous and synchronous modes of distance education and thereby improve access for students using low technology with high immediacy.
• Adopt and develop technology that enhances the enabling teaching and learning environment, informed by the strategic drivers and indicators in the Teaching and Learning Strategy in lieu of blended learning.
• Establish and maintain well-functioning campus structures involved in the communities.
• Develop social consciousness and responsiveness in students by encouraging participation in community work.
• Develop student and staff capacity to effectively engage with technology-enhanced teaching and learning.
• Improve partnerships with reputable international institutions so that collaborative research, joint degrees and co-publications can be increased.
• Access new sources of funding for technology development and commercialisation.

• In the long term

The phenomenon of unbundling universities and online learning has made its appearance globally as part of what 4IR offers higher education.

Like any other business sector, the changing demands of our stakeholders (students and potential employers and industry) drive change in the education sector. The student population is constantly changing and as a result there are new expectations for seamless higher education and lifelong learning experiences that fit different lifestyles, individual circumstances and preferences.

Younger generations entering higher education have a completely different point of departure than previous generations. As digital natives, they have always had technology fully integrated into most aspects of their lives, and after Covid-19 they would expect the same when it comes to their educational experience.

In summary

The higher education sector, including the NWU, has proven its ability to adapt to change and focus on research and innovation efforts in contributing towards combating a global pandemic. With our focus on the implementation of our digital business strategy, we will continue to differentiate ourselves from other players.

We believe that differentiator is our ability to explore new ways of doing things, expand our horizons and evolve to become even more than we were before – all while imbuing everything we do with an ethic of care.