Transforming Higher Education in Australia: Victoria University

Cisco has shared a long-standing and successful relationship with Victoria University (VU). VU is committed to accelerating its transition to a digital campus to enhance student engagement, deliver productivity savings and increase capacity to innovate.

VU’s digital campus strategy will fully exploit available digital technology to deliver a compelling, effective and efficient learning experience. The benefits envisaged by VU will include more engaged students, better student outcomes, a more digital-savvy workforce and future-proofed digital infrastructure.

To showcase the future partnership and to better understand the impact that digital transformation will have on campus and community at Victoria University, we’ve interviewed Richard Constantine, the Pro Vice-Chancellor of Digital Technologies.

Read on to see what he had to say about the digitization of education and Victoria University’s Cisco partnership.

How have educational institutions become more dependent on technology to meet the needs of students and educators?

Richard Constantine (RC): Students’ expectations have changed due to advances in technology and life pressures have also meant that students want to be able to learn on their own terms and be treated as individuals. Technology is a way that we can satisfy students’ needs easily and effectively.

Where are you currently in the process of digital transformation?  

(RC): As far as the process of digital transformation is concerned, our university is currently hard at work developing the blueprint to help shift our organization in the digital world over the next one to two years with some very innovative new technologies from Cisco.

How important is digital transformation to your university?

(RC): Digital transformation is very important for our university. As we try to accommodate students and their various learning styles, technology will help us understand things better, from the way that students learn to their changing needs. It will also give us quantitative information around student behaviors that we couldn’t have gotten before.

How has Cisco helped in achieving your vision of digital transformation?

(RC): Cisco has been critical in helping us achieve that vision because they’ll provide the important layer of innovation to help make our university increasingly agile and to incorporate new technologies that will meet our students’ rising need for accessibility.

Watch this video to learn more about how universities are leveraging digital technologies to transform higher education around the world, and visit cs.co/digitalcampusanz to see more.