Kassie Burkholder (NAIT) on Building a Smarter Future Through Digital Transformation

On today’s episode of the Illumination by Modern Campus podcast, podcast host Shauna Cox was joined by Kassie Burkholder to discuss the role of continuing education divisions in driving digital transformation through agility and labor market alignment, and the institutional barriers that hinder innovation across higher education.

Transcript

Shauna Cox (00:00):Sounds good. Kassie, welcome back to the Illumination podcast.

Kassie Burkholder (00:06):Thanks, Shauna.

Shauna Cox (00:07):Well, we are here to talk about digital transformation, which is a big topic in and of itself, especially for higher education. So let's get down to the nitty gritty of it and what does digital transformation actually mean in your opinion?

Kassie Burkholder (00:22):Yeah, I mean, you could approach this from so many different ways, but I feel like digital transformation is really just a fancy way of saying, let's work smarter and not as hard. And it's not just about putting things online or making things less manual from an education perspective. I think it's about rethinking how we do education. Who are we serving? What do they need from us? How can we meet them where they're at, using the tools that make sense, maybe the tools that make sense today. And not 10 years ago. One thing that's really, we're going through a big digital transformation right now at my institution at Nate, and there's lots going on with that. And one of the things I'm saying is we want to be easy to do business with. So creating digital tools and a digital way of doing things that makes us easier to do business with is our MO. That's like the easiest answer, but it could be. Yeah,

Shauna Cox (01:27):And I think, so when you're talking about easy to do business with, makes complete sense. Now when you're thinking about that, I feel like that's another one where we could go in so many different directions. Is that easy to do business with employers, industry or students or everybody? Who are you referring to when we talk about that?

Kassie Burkholder (01:46):Yeah, great question. For me and the group that I oversee, I would say it's kind of all of the above. So it's students, it's industry partners, it's associations and community members, which includes businesses. It's all of those things. People are so used to an online transaction these days, and if you're coming to make a purchase and you're doing it on our website, whether that's an educational product or something from Amazon, people have come to expect a certain level of experience. And I want that to carry through to education as well so that there's no barriers put in the way of people following through with what they're intending to do or we're making it harder for them to do business with us.

Shauna Cox (02:36):Absolutely. And I want to expand on the idea of barriers, but barriers from behind the scenes because you laid out digital transformation in this higher education context. There's so many components to it. It is clearly not just flipping a switch, doing a change in one day type of thing. So what are some of those obstacles to digital transformation at say, the average post-secondary?

Kassie Burkholder (03:00):Oh, geez. I mean there's so many answers here, and I hope my colleagues listening. I'm sure that they're like, oh, I should have said this one or something. But you know what? I'm going to say higher education loves its process, and sometimes things get in the way because our process gets in the way of progress. So people get nervous about change, especially when we're trying to shake up systems that maybe have been around for decades. And plus, there's also that divide sometimes between how fast we should go or what we should do or those things that create maybe unnecessary barriers. Meanwhile, the world is moving forward without us and we're stuck here at mired in our process. But I could pick lots of things, but I'd say yeah, there's a lot of red tape when it comes to process in higher education, and we do sometimes get hung up on that rather than a trial and error mentality that we find maybe in the private sector.

Shauna Cox (04:05):Absolutely. And I love the idea, just dovetailing off of that, the idea of the innovation, if you're going to fail, fail fast to move on. I think that's a really important mindset to have, and you're talking about moving forward. We're used to moving forward in our everyday lives. So it's kind of tricky when either your work situation is not moving up at the same time, but when you're looking at the institution, naturally, correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty confident that I'm not here in that CE divisions are typically ones who are able to move a little bit faster than the rest of the institution. So why are continuing education units leading the way on supporting this institutional digital transformation effort?

Kassie Burkholder (04:49):Yeah, great question always. And I think you know what, I think I might've even said this to you before, but I like to think of us as the concept car at Nate that failed quick kind of mentality. I don't think we have the luxury to overthink sometimes we don't have time to overthink. We just need to get it done. We work directly with industry, we listen to our learners and we do have a little bit more freedom to experiment than let's say our credit counterparts when it comes to certain things. I think that combo lets us move fast. It lets us test things. It lets us tweak things, lets us scale a little bit quicker.

(05:31):I do think that lots of innovation lies within the CE departments on campus, and we've seen that time again when COVID happened, oh, we got to pivot everything online. I would say, and I'd make a guess that most continuing education departments probably pivoted quicker than the rest of their institutions because we're able to make that pivot. And I think the kind of people that are attracted to that learning, that continuing education kind of style of work that we do is a little bit of a different person. We're a little bit of entrepreneurs. We like to maybe work a little bit more creatively sometimes when it comes to coming up with solutions. That's not to say that our colleagues on the credit side, but they have a different process to follow. They're regulated a little bit more. We have less of that because our success is tied with labor market outcomes and being aligned with industry. And if we're not aligned with industry, well, we're not going to make money, which means then we're not. So we operate more like a business that way. And I think that that adds to our agility for sure.

Shauna Cox (06:37):Absolutely. You have this bigger sandbox to play within and experiment. Maybe you don't have, there might be some innovative people on the credit side or the other institutional departments that want to break out of that, but they might just have their hands tied, hands tied a little bit more tightly than someone.

Kassie Burkholder (06:55):Yeah.

Shauna Cox (06:57):You mentioned how you guys are directly tied to the labor market, and I think that dovetails beautifully into the next question of how can the work that the CE divisions do with digital transformation, how can that support that work with the labor market?

Kassie Burkholder (07:15):So I think everything we do in continuing education has to be rooted in what's actually happening in the labor market.

(07:23):So we don't build any new products, we don't build any new programs. We don't do anything if it isn't rooted in filling gaps, filling in demand careers, those kinds of things directly tied with labor market outcomes. And the digital tools help us respond faster. We're seeing lots of AI right now. We're seeing lots of things happening with delivery formats changing and lots of scale happening there, microcredentials or stackable credentials or who even can take our programming geographically, digitally. We're in this digital world where somebody on the other side of Canada can take my programming in Edmonton at eight, and that's okay. And likewise, somebody here can take programming later. I think that those digital tools are helping us scale quicker, and if somebody is looking to upscale or to pivot careers, they don't want to wait two years for a program to launch or a year for that program to launch. And we get that. We do that well and we are using the tools that we have our advantage to do that.

Shauna Cox (08:32):Absolutely. And then we mentioned this idea of the sandbox, the car of the institution. So how can digital transformation initiatives across, say the CE division, serve as this kind of blueprint for the rest of the institution who may be looking for ways to be more innovative, be more proactive, and kind of move into a transformation?

Kassie Burkholder (08:56):Yeah, I think in some respects we can be a little bit of a Guinea pig. If we see something having really great success, we can say, Hey, this has lots of success. Let's pivot this into a pathway. Where's a pathway? How can we transition either a pathway from credit to non-credit or from the other way around so that people see their lifelong learning experience? Maybe you start with upgrading or an ESL program or a pret trades program, and then you move into an apprenticeship program or you move into a degree or a diploma, and then after that, then you come back to continuing education and you get your post diploma credential or something like this. We try, we break things, we rebuild them. We're not afraid to shelf a product if it didn't work, if it's not making money, if there's no demand for it, we will rebuild them and we'll pivot.

(09:59):I think other departments around higher education can take a look at that and say, okay, what is working? What's not working? Is there areas that we can leverage or is there lessons that we can learn? But then also maybe there's a way to build it in a different way on a credit lens, for example, at other parts of the institution that we can't do in non-credit. So there's lots of stuff that we can't do in credit or there's lots of stuff that credit can't do, the non-credit can, but leveraging those skills. I have this wonderful thought in my mind that one day we'll get to this place where just ideas are generated at Nate, and what happens is those ideas just find their home in wherever it makes the best sense for labor markets. So we have an idea. The idea is great. Now, where can this pick up steam faster? Is that in non-credit or is in that in credit? So we're just taking ideas and we're finding their fit for the best delivery and the best student experience, not based on whether the idea should be non-credit or credit, but based on where it can actually gain traction faster.

Shauna Cox (11:11):And I love that among other

Kassie Burkholder (11:12): Things.

Shauna Cox (11:14):And I think that's really important because it's putting the student first and having more of a student first mindset of here's the idea, where does it fit? It's not well, so we're going to do this and let's squeeze this idea in here. I think there's a certain level of collaboration that's required across that institution there. Those are all the questions I have for you, but I'm going to throw in here dovetailing off your last response of is there anything that you would like to add that I may have missed or advice you want to share for people who are looking to have these ideas and not put them into a box and have level of collaboration or trying to shift towards this digital transformation? Any advice, lesson learned? Anything I may have missed that you want to share?

Kassie Burkholder (12:03):Yeah, I don't know. I think I always make the comment of get in trouble for putting pucks in the net. Try the thing and see what happens. What's the worst that can happen? Oh, it fails and you iterate and you do it again. But yeah, I think

Shauna Cox (12:25):Going back to the idea of you fail, you fail fast, you move

Kassie Burkholder (12:28):On. Yeah.

Shauna Cox (12:29):And that's just how it works there. Well, Kathy, thank you so much for this. Before I let you go, there is another question I'm going to throw in here. Now, I have asked you in the past about a restaurant recommendation, but this time we're going to switch it up and you're going to talk about if someone's coming to Edmonton, Alberta, what do they need to do? Where do they need to go?

Kassie Burkholder (12:49):Yeah, yeah, good question. I mean, it depends on the season. If it's the summertime and you're an outdoor person, our river valley is beautiful. I don't know the actual statistic, but I think it's the biggest continuous walking trails in North America or something like this. It's really big. It's beautiful. Meanders through the river. It doesn't even feel like you're in the middle of the city. It's lovely. We also have in the summertime, so many festivals. My favorite is folk festival if you're into music. But in the winter, all the winter activities, cross country skiing, also in the river Valley. Beautiful. And then so many good food choices. But Edmonton's a fun place. Happy to get an email from somebody and asking me what they should do. I'll give you all the recommendations.

Shauna Cox (13:35):Amazing. Kassie, thank you so much for being on. You got it, Shauna, and sharing your insights.

Kassie Burkholder (14:15):You got it. Thanks Shauna. All.