As we considered potential scenarios that might guide an institution's pandemic recovery planning, we made three assumptions.Īssumption 1: The pandemic will begin to resolve sometime in 2021.
This year we offer three Top IT Issues lists, and we examine the top 5 issues within each scenario. Instead, we used a scenario approach to consider three different ways institutions might emerge from the pandemic. With planning horizons sharply attenuated, we thought a single list of Top Issues was too constraining. You will find no "Top 10" IT Issues for 2021. With this in mind, EDUCAUSE took a different approach to this year's IT Issues project. Now is time to consider how higher education will emerge from the pandemic and how information technology can help. Agility and flexibility help us move quickly and adaptively as circumstances change and new information comes to light. Scenarios help us anticipate alternative potential futures, so that we are prepared not only for what we might hope or dread but also for what actually happens. We have also learned the usefulness of considering scenarios and increasing our agility and flexibility. Most of us have learned that obstinacy, cheerleading, denial, and magical thinking are not effective ways to manage a pandemic. We've learned the futility of making long-term plans to mitigate a disease with symptoms, diagnoses, treatments, and prognoses that are complex and poorly understood. Throughout the pandemic, we have all learned a different way to think about the future.
What will be left, what will we face on the other side of COVID-19, and what role will technology play in the recovery ahead? How might higher education emerge from the pandemic stronger and fitter for the future? These are the questions the 2020–2021 EDUCAUSE IT Issues Panel has explored this year. At some time in the future, epidemiologists will no longer appear regularly on news programs, and public spaces will no longer be marked with circles every six feet. There was no pandemic playbook for higher education, and 2020 has been a year requiring a decade's worth of effort and change.Īnd yet, the pandemic will end. The diversity of campus cultures, financial health, business models, and students led to a similar diversity in the impact of and response to the pandemic. The COVID-19 pandemic has challenged all industries and sectors, and higher education was no exception.
The EDUCAUSE 2021 Top IT Issues examine three potential scenarios for the role of technology in higher education after the pandemic: restore, evolve, or transform.
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